


Timecode

by Rasborealis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 25 Days of Harry and Draco, 25 Days of Harry and Draco 2019, Amnesia, Department of Mysteries, Ex-Auror Harry Potter, Healer Draco Malfoy, M/M, Magical Theory, Ministry of Magic (Harry Potter), Minor Character Death, Mystery, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Poisoning, Potions Theory, Unspeakable Hermione Granger, Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes Instant Atmosphere Product Line
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-01
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:54:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 51,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21637693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasborealis/pseuds/Rasborealis
Summary: Harry Potter has been dead for two years, and Draco would laugh in the face of anyone claiming differently.Well, anyone but Hermione Granger.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 153
Kudos: 432
Collections: 25 Days of Draco and Harry 2019





	1. December 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my 25 Days of Draco and Harry fic, meaning one chapter is supposed to be written and posted every day in December until Christmas. It's roughly planned out, but it's a type of challenge I haven't done before and so I don't know for absolutely certain I'll be able to keep pace. There may be slight delays. 
> 
> The tags WILL evolve. I won't tag anything until I know for absolutely certain that it is going to be in the story, I don't want to disappoint anyone or make false promises.

Draco had rarely been so relieved for a shift to be over. The golden fairy lights twinkled warmly overhead as he changed out of his lime green robe, but they couldn’t chase away the icy feeling in him that was burrowing bone deep. He didn’t bother to hold in a sigh.

“I heard,” Lewis told him.

“Good for you,” Draco said tiredly.

The other man tossed his own balled up robe into the laundry chute and walked over to where Draco was standing, hands propped against the wall, head low. “I just meant – I know how much it sucks, losing a patient. Go home, have some tea, go to bed.”

“Yeah,” Draco muttered.

“We’re healers, Malfoy. It’s a part of the job. You did what you could, you always do.”

Draco knew all of that, but he couldn’t deny it helped a bit to hear it from someone else as well. “Thanks. It’s just…she was so young. It’s hitting me harder than usual.”

Lewis winced. “How young?”

“Second year at Hogwarts.”

“Ah, shit.” Lewis sat on a nearby bench.

“Yeah. Tried to brew a potion to become prettier, her friend said. The two of them were bullied, called ugly, she thought it was worth the risk.”

“Poor kid.”

“I can’t help but wonder if I would have been one of those bullies if she'd gone to school with me.”

“Do _not_ go down that rabbit hole. It’s not going to end well, and there’s no point. Go home, use your days off to recover, and have a good talk with Clarke when you get back.”

Draco had been planning on that anyway. Five years ago, he would have laughed at anyone suggesting that he might voluntarily see a mind healer, but Clarke was damn good at her job. She _got_ it, she didn’t judge him, and in the end, talking through his issues helped him be a better healer.

“Go home, Malfoy,” Lewis said again, and Draco did.

This late at night, the corridors of St Mungo’s were close to deserted, although the place was never truly quiet. There were only six people waiting in the reception area. Draco thought it might have been the emptiest he’d ever seen it, although it was possible that it was a trick of the eye. The area had been expanded and modernized the year before, making it bright and welcoming, with comfortable chairs and sofas. It was an extreme contrast to the cramped room it has been before, where six people would have been a much bigger, much more obvious presence.

Harold the Welcome Wizard gave him a cheerful wave. Draco responded with a tired smile as he walked past, but even that faded when he realized that he’d once again forgotten his recent resolution to avoid the reception area.

The showy, illuminated display case in the center of the room had formerly held the Beater’s Bat that had famously decided the two-thousand and five Quidditch World Cup in England’s favor. It had been pleasant to look at, a reminder of the ecstatic nation-wide celebration that had taken place following the event. Draco had fond memories of getting copiously drunk off whatever cheap alcohol they’d served at the muggle bar where he’d been dragged by his co-workers, and then being enthusiastically taught the joys of karaoke.

A month ago, however, some complete fuckwit in administration had decided to change the display, and now the glass case held a much more depressing memento – a single wand on a cushion of gold-trimmed red velvet.

Holly, phoenix feather, eleven inches.

A dull pain bloomed in his chest every time he laid eyes on it, a harsh reminder of the stunned shock that had crashed through him and the entire wizarding population when Harry Potter had died. Draco had never even spoken to the Saviour after the war trials, but seven years of shared history meant that Potter’s death had hit him hard just the same.

Even though it had been more than two years ago, he remembered the day in detail, down to the fact that it had been a soggy cheese sandwich he’d been in the process of eating when one of the other trainee healers had burst into the room and simply shouted it out.

_Potter’s dead, and Auror Bones is in critical condition!_

Of all the things, it had been Fiendfyre that had trapped the Golden Boy in a basement after he’d been disarmed and gone recklessly charging in anyway, like the blasted Gryffindor he'd always been. It wasn’t fair, Draco thought, that Potter, who had risked his bloody life so many times for other people, who had risked it to save _Draco_ , hadn’t been saved by anyone in return.

And now his wand was all that was left, and they’d displayed it like a memorial designed to punch Draco in the gut whenever he caught sight of it.

He breathed a little easier once he was outside in the cold air. Potter was gone, and so was Draco’s young patient, and yet life went on, _had_ to go on, and all Draco could do was to keep fighting for every life that hung in the balance in his ward so that their loss wouldn’t leave yet another scar on their battle-worn generation.

He’d forgotten it was the first day of December, but it came back to him easily now that he saw Muggle London already beginning to sparkle with seasonal decorations. Draco allowed the cheer of it to soothe his dark mood just the tiniest bit, soaked in the atmosphere of the lush green wreath on a door, the chain of light wrapped around a lamppost, the candles glittering in the windows, the smiling snowman in a telephone box –

Draco stopped. He turned. He blinked, thrice.

The snowman in the telephone box kept smiling cheerfully.

“What?” Draco asked faintly.

“I dunno, mate, I just noticed it too.” A dark-haired man had popped up next to Draco, newspaper held in a limp hand as he studied the sight with a puzzled frown.

“There isn’t even really any snow on the ground,” Draco said helplessly. He didn’t _think_ there was magic involved, but then how…

“Must be fake snow, I suppose,” said the man.

“Why would anyone put a fake snowman in a telephone box?”

“Maybe it’s advertising something,” the man suggested, rounding the box and looking it up and down. “Not sure what it would be though.”

“It’s not an advertisement, you daft buggers,” said a girl of maybe sixteen with a glittering black knit cap on her head. “It’s to make you smile.”

“It’s _strange_ ,” said the man, and walked away with a shake of his head.

Draco kept looking at the cheerful fellow. It _was_ a strange sight, but it was also difficult to stay sad and gloomy when there was an optimistically grinning snowman peering out through the panes of glass, by the looks of it having a grand old time confusing as many people as possible. 

The corners of Draco’s mouth pulled up.

“There, see.” The girl elbowed him gently. “He’s made your day a little better, hasn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Draco said quietly.

“Had a long one, haven’t you?” The girl gave him a sympathetic look. “You look it.”

“Cheers,” Draco said drily.

She laughed. “Go home and have some tea and think about the cheeky snowman in a telephone box,” she advised.

“I will,” Draco said, and walked on, heart a little lighter with the reminder of joy and kindness.

When he let himself into his flat, he wondered for perhaps the five hundredth time whether he should maybe get a Kneazle or something of the sort. The place was so cold and lonely and dark whenever he came back, and it seemed doubly so if his day had been a bad one. He threw his bag in a corner and dropped his coat somewhere in the hall, his mind only on the tea everyone kept telling him to have. It was late, and part of him wanted to drop into bed right away, but a cup of tea would help soothe his stressed-out mind. 

He was waiting for it to steep when the insistent knock on the door sounded. With an annoyed growl, he rose from his armchair, prepared to eviscerate whichever poor soul was rudely disturbing his hard-won peace. The words stuck in his throat, however, when he ripped open the door only to be faced with a familiar head of bushy hair.

“Granger?” be forced out after a moment of stunned silence.

“Hello, Malfoy.” She looked anxious, fidgety, and at the same time even more tired than Draco felt. “May I come in?” Draco’s words about how this was a really bad time for a chat stuck in his throat when she added a quiet, “Please?”

He tried to lead her into the kitchen so he could offer her tea and buy himself a little time to process that someone with whom he’d only ever traded insults was at his doorstep at eleven thirty at night, but she stopped in the dimly lit hall and faced him.

“I need your help,” she said without preamble.

“Why?” Draco asked neutrally – at least he hoped it sounded that way.

“She cleared her throat. “You’re a healer.”

“St Mungo’s is full of those, so that can’t be the only reason.”

“It isn’t. But.” She bit her lip.

“But what?”

“I…I’ll need to cast a confidentiality charm first.”

Ministry business, then. There was no way Granger was authorized to cast that charm if it didn’t relate to her work in the Department of Mysteries somehow. But that still didn’t tell Draco much of anything, and she’d need to give him more than that before he’d allow her to point a wand at him.

“Not until I know what it’s about,” he insisted. “At least in general terms.”

She slumped. “We need your expertise on antidotes,” she said. “Urgently.”

“And you’re not involving the hospital because…?”

He could see her desire for his help warring with her need for discretion plainly on her face, and decided to try and help the matter along.

“My healer’s oath prevents me from sharing any information you give me,” he said. “You know that. And I _will_ agree to the charm once I know more, but I won’t allow you to cast anything on me if I have no idea at all why you’re even casting it.

She stared at him for a long moment before she gave a silent nod.

“So?” he asked.

She took a deep breath. “It’s Harry.”

He couldn’t help the snort that escaped him at that nonsensical statement, and tiredness mixed with irritation was finally getting the best of him. “ _That’s_ what’s urgent? How could that possibly be urgent? I just came off a thirty hour shift, Granger. Unless Potter has miraculously managed to resurrect himself, this is going to need to wait until the morning.”

She swallowed hard but kept looking him in the eyes.

“Well…that’s the thing. He has.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #1 – A snowman in a red telephone box


	2. December 2

“Merlin fuck,” Draco said for the third time. It seemed appropriate enough, because in front of him, in a makeshift bed in the Department of Mysteries – in Hermione Granger’s office, to be precise – was Harry Potter.

Who’d been dead for two years, and now wasn’t.

Draco’s mind still hadn’t managed to wrap itself around that.

“Yeah,” Granger said quietly next to him.

_“How?”_

“We don’t know. He came out of the Veil.”

“The…the one in the _Death Room?”_ Draco had never seen it, of course, but he knew the rumors, and he’d heard retellings of the battle that had happened here at the end of his fifth year. Those made it seem impossible enough.

“Yes. He just…he just fell out.”

“Conscious?” Draco asked.

“No.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but have you checked if it’s actually him?”

“I’m not a complete idiot, Malfoy,” Granger responded without venom, and sighed wearily. “I checked every way I possibly could without breaking the stasis charm.”

Draco would have asked why Potter was in stasis, but since Granger had summoned him because of his expertise, he assumed that it was the same reason why Draco’s patients so often were in stasis as well. “How do you know he’s been poisoned? What signs did he show?”

His trained eye couldn’t see any of the visual clues most poisons left on a patient’s body, and apparently Potter hadn’t been awake to say anything, so he was extremely curious about the answer. 

Instead of telling him, Granger rounded the body and reached out, before hesitating and glancing at Zacharias Smith, who sat on a stool by the far wall with his wand raised.

“Go ahead,” Smith said. “You can’t honestly believe that I’d let the spell slip just because you’re touching him.”

“I didn’t want you to be caught unaware,” Granger answered primly.

Ordinary stasis charms had limitations. They held once cast, and they froze most of the body’s processes, but others they only slowed, and that hindered some poisons more than others. Even with stasis charms, Draco’s work was often a race against time.

But Potter was in true stasis, utterly frozen. He could be moved to a certain extent, but he wasn’t aging, his brain not sending a single signal, the blood in his veins completely still. He was, for all intents and purposes, suspended in time. The Unspeakables weren’t fucking around.

The True Stasis spell cost more power to cast, needed an extremely skillful caster, and the mind needed to be sharply focused to keep it going. Draco didn’t even know the incantation for it. He was, however, willing to bet Smith had been switching off with another Unspeakable; there was no way he could have held the charm for more than an hour at a time, and that was a generous estimate on Draco’s part.

A moment later, Draco forgot all about stasis spells, because Granger had raised Potter’s left arm.

It was covered in writing. Most of it, Draco couldn’t make out – his eyes seemed to slide away whenever he tried to focus on a specific spot. The Unspeakables had probably obscured it with a spell, deciding it was none of Draco’s business. But on the back of Potter’s hand, the black letters were large and clear.

_POISONED_

_GET MALFOY_

“Merlin fuck,” Draco breathed, yet again.

“Yes,” Granger agreed.

“When did he come through?”

“Only about…” Granger turned to Smith. “Was it three hours ago?”

“Shortly after nine,” said Smith, sounding annoyed. As far as Draco remembered from Hogwarts, that was just his default. “I can’t tell you how long ago that was, I’m currently unable to cast a _Tempus_.”

When Granger did it instead, Draco learned that it was now almost one in the morning. Once the shock and excitement wore off, he’d be ready to keel over.

“Zach and I were taking the weekly readings around the Veil when he came through,” said a voice behind them. Draco turned and saw a woman with light brown curls bound in a tight ponytail coming into the office. She looked vaguely familiar.

“Clearwater, right?” he asked.

She gave him a surprised smile. “Yes. Penelope Clearwater. I’m surprised you remember.”

“You gave my friend Pansy and me a lecture once when we had a shouting match in the corridor,” he said, though an explanation probably wasn’t needed. He was too tired to care.

Clearwater made a polite face and stepped past him to look down at Potter. “Anything new since I left?”

“No,” Granger said and accepted the sandwich Clearwater held out for her. “I’ve only just come back myself. Malfoy hasn’t had the chance to have a look yet.”

Draco’s mind snapped quickly back to the problem at hand. He studied Potter once more. “So he simply fell out, just like that?”

“There was a sound,” said Clearwater. “Some sort of strange…it’s difficult to describe. The Veil’s always whispering – that’s why it’s policy that no one goes in by themselves, it gets dangerous if you start listening too closely – but the whispering was suddenly drowned out by something like…like a howling wind, and the fabric of the Veil moved more than it normally does. And then Harry came sailing out.”

“We didn’t even know who it was at first,” said Smith. “Obviously it wouldn’t have occurred to us that it could possibly be him.”

“It was clear, though, when we rolled him over and saw his face,” said Clearwater. “I went to fetch Hermione, and then we saw the writing.”

“Is any of it more information about what might have happened to cause him being poisoned?” Draco asked, not unreasonably, in his opinion.

“I don’t think so,” said Granger. “I’ll check more closely in a little while. I obscured it as soon as I realized that some of it looked like either personal or sensitive information, but I’ll share as much as I can.”

“Why do _you_ get to be the only one who’s allowed to see it?” Smith whined.

“Because I’m the one here who’s most qualified to speak for Harry right now, since he can’t do it himself,” Granger informed him without missing a beat. Smith looked like he wanted to argue, but then he seemed to decide that it was pointless while most of his focus had to be elsewhere.

“What do you need to create an antidote, Malfoy?” asked Clearwater.

“Obviously I need to know what the poison is first of all,” Draco replied, and considered pinching the back of his own hand to jolt himself out of the fog of exhaustion that was closing in on him. “I have a few diagnostic spells I can cast on him as he is, but I’ll need a small skin sample, a blood sample, and a hair sample as well. If it’s a poison I’m familiar with, or even a combination of them, brewing an antidote should be fairly straightforward, although it depends some on how long the poison has been in his system. If it’s something I’ve never seen, or something botched…” Draco grimaced. “I can still do it, but I can’t predict how long it’ll take me, or what’s involved.”

Granger gave a single nod, staring at the wall and looking deep in thought.

“Is there anyone else who could do this?” Clearwater asked. “Who might know more?”

“No,” Draco said simply, and that wasn’t so much bragging as it was true. There was a reason St Mungo’s had agreed to employ him despite his less-than-stellar past.

“How soon can you get started?” Granger asked.

“As soon as I’ve had some sleep,” Draco said immediately. “I’ll need to take the sample to my lab, and – “

“No,” Granger said decisively. “None of this can leave the department, and we can’t have St Mungo’s get too curious about what you’re doing. You’ll need to work here. We’ll get you everything you need, all the lab equipment, the ingredients.”

“I do have a job I need to get back to in a couple of days,” Draco reminded her mildly.

“Shouldn’t be too much of a problem,” Granger assured him. “I’ll let them know that the Ministry has…I don’t know, commandeered you for some issue that sounds terribly important and halfway plausible. Maybe I can send someone else to help out in your ward for a time.”

“I’d appreciate that. I do have a responsibility to all my patients, not just Potter.”

She nodded. “Consider it done.”

~*~

Draco was roused from blissful sleep by a knock on his door. His mind took a while to get a grip on reality, longer than it usually did. What had happened the night before felt foggy and unreal, like a strange dream, until he realized that it was Granger at his door and was forcefully reminded that he _had_ in fact been in the Department of Mysteries only hours ago.

“Have you eaten?” she asked without preamble.

Draco, who had literally rolled out of bed less than a minute ago and banged into two walls and five different pieces of furniture on his way to open the door for her, shook his head.

“That’s fine,” she said and held up a paper bag. “I brought breakfast. Afterward we need to go to St Mungo’s and grab everything you need from your lab. I squared everything away with them, you’re on infinite loan for this, er, case. One of the Auror Department’s potions consultants, Victoria Sommersby, is going to help out in your ward until you get back.”

Draco nodded and led her to the kitchen. “I know her,” he confirmed. “She’s decent. How the fuck are you so awake? When in Merlin’s name did you sleep if you’ve been doing all these other things?”

“Wideye potion.”

“Figures,” Draco muttered. He didn’t often use them, as it was easily possible to build up a tolerance. He had a feeling he might need a fair few of them during the next few days, though.

He fumbled his way through making tea, but was cheered up by the fact that Granger had bothered to bring the _good_ kind of breakfast pastries, the ones from the patisserie a few blocks from Draco’s flat.

“Did you know I like these, or did you guess?” he asked.

“Blaise,” she said, like it was obvious, and it sort of was, really. Granger didn’t routinely come in contact with all that many people who knew Draco well, and there were far too many of Draco’s favorites in the bag for it to be a guess. He gave her an appreciate nod and took a bite of crunchy, flaky palmier.

“I suppose you’ll want to take the Floo?” he asked as he downed the remainder of his tea and carefully wrapped up the rest of the pastries.

Granger’s brow furrowed. “Shouldn’t we? It’s quite awful out.”

“I usually walk. But it’s fine. I know time is of the essence.”

“Well, yes, but keeping you in good spirits is too,” she said. “I do want you to do your best work.”

“I’m not going to let him or anyone else die just because I’m narked off,” he bristled.

“Not what I meant. It’s just a psychological thing; generally, if people are content, they produce better work.”

“Fair,” he said. “But let’s enter through the staff Floo anyway, it’s far less conspicuous than walking in the front door.”

Granger agreed, and soon they were through the Floo and on their way through the bustling corridors to the third-floor lab. Draco took a few minutes to stop by the ward proper, talk to one of the nurses, and look at his notes on the current patients to double-check that they were correct and complete, which would make things a lot easier for Victoria.

“Will she have a way to get in contact with me while she’s here?” he asked.

“I’ll make sure that you’re alerted to any urgent questions or concerns,” Hermione promised immediately.

He had to admit that a small part of him had expected her to focus on helping Potter to the detriment of everything and everyone else, and he was glad to see that wasn’t the case. Instead she had been polite, as forthcoming as she could be, and had agreed to accommodate him in every way he could reasonably expect her to. Maybe he should have been surprised that they were able to interact so civilly and smoothly, but he also knew that they had long since grown up and changed from who they’d been before and during the war.

There were things they would have to talk about eventually if they kept being in each other’s proximity. It would have to wait, though, until they weren’t dealing with anything quite so urgent.

Together, they shrunk and packed up all of the lab equipment he would need, except for the few things that didn’t react well being shrunk, which they arranged to have delivered. Draco had, halfway through, started mentally cataloguing what he would need to do and in which order, but his mind kept getting stuck on _Potter’s alive, he’s fucking alive_ and sent his thoughts into a rapid tailspin every time.

He had been wondering when it would finally, truly hit him.

“What’s wrong?” Granger asked when he took his third wrong turn on the way back to the Floo.

“Nothing, really. I’m just processing. It’s…” He shook his head and then shrugged, a bit helplessly.

_Potter’s not dead. Potter’s alive, with his stupid hair and stupid scar and stupid Saviour complex. Potter’s real and tangible and here, I could just reach out and touch him, just like that, and he’ll breathe again and look stupidly earnest like he always does, and, and…_

Draco’s lungs burned as he sucked in air trying to calm himself. His head spun. He couldn’t think, couldn’t grasp on to any solid thought, because if Potter wasn’t dead then which truths were even still safe?

“Suppose we’ll take a walk after all,” he heard, and a whispered spell and a pair of surprisingly strong arms supported him all the way to the nearest Apparition point.

~*~

Granger’s warming charms were downright ridiculous, Draco decided. She’d only cast a single one, and it had him feeling cozy even after crouching on the frozen ground amidst wind and heavy snowfall for over ten minutes.

She hadn’t done it right away after apparating them to the park. Instead, she’d let the cold, fresh air ground him until his breathing slowed and his vision cleared. Now that it had, she was crouching next to him as they both stared at the unending flurries.

“I know,” she told him, as though he’d said something.

It was a bit stupid, really. Draco wasn’t even all that close to Potter, and here he was, being calmed by Hermione Granger of all people, a woman who had to have been affected by Potter’s death, and now his return, more than anyone, and who hadn’t had much more time than Draco to process.

“I still don’t understand,” he said tonelessly. “Death isn’t supposed to be something you can just bloody _recover_ from.”

Granger huffed a small laugh that lacked humor. “Tell Harry that.”

He glanced at her. “So, it wasn’t anything you lot were mucking around with? Trying to bring him back?”

“Absolutely not,” Granger said emphatically in a way that made Draco think she had already considered and dismissed the possibility. “Not even by accident. No one goes near the Veil these days apart from the readings we take, and those are only for observation, to make sure it isn’t doing anything bloody weird. Not that it didn’t do something bloody weird anyway, but.” She flailed out a hand as though insinuating that the Veil’s apparent recalcitrant qualities didn’t concern her overmuch at the moment.

Draco nodded in acknowledgment.

“And either way,” she went on, “we’re researchers, not necromancers.”

“Glad to know that,” he said.

For a moment, he wasn’t sure Granger had heard him. She was staring unblinkingly at a tree in the middle-distance, half obscured by the falling flakes.

“Voldemort tried to cheat death,” she said then, and it was only because of long months of purposefully done desensitization that Draco didn’t flinch. “So even if I could, even if I wanted to…if I did that to him, if I perverted everything Harry stood for because of some selfish desire to have him back, he would never, ever forgive it, or accept it. He’d kill me, and then probably himself out of principle.”

Draco suddenly felt the chill on his skin despite the charm. “Do you think that’s what’ll happen?” he asked. “Once he wakes up?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Since I don’t know why this happened in the first place. I’ve got a working theory, but…it’s extremely shaky. It’s ludicrous, actually, but so’s this entire situation. We’ll have to wait until he can talk to us.”

Draco managed to pull himself together. “Right,” he said, and straightened up. “And before that can happen, I need to do a lot of work. We should get going.”

“Yes,” she agreed, and stood as well, brushing snow off her shoulders. “The ministry is nearby, actually. If you like, we can walk from here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #2 - Snow falling in a park


	3. December 3

“Hurry,” Susan Bones said, frowning steeply as she scanned the hall they were standing in. “If we don’t manage to intercept that –”

“Yes, I’m aware, Sue.” Potter adjusted the grip on his wand. He was frowning as well, looking tense, focused. “Since when am _I_ the one who’s advocating caution?”

“I’m only trying to weigh indulging your paranoia against screwing this up and risking more suicides happening. We’ve got…crap, we’ve got five, six minutes, max, before they’ll be gone from wherever the hand-off is happening.”

“Right,” Potter said with a terse nod, “let’s be quick and find those coordinates, then. I’ll –”

_“Expelliarmus!”_

Potter’s wand flew out of his hand and straight Draco’s way. He ducked, idiotically, before remembering it couldn’t actually hit him. There was a clattering sound somewhere in a far corner.

“Smooth,” said Blaise, who was suddenly next to him.

“Fuck off,” Draco grumbled, one eye on Potter, who let out a shout of rage and charged at the bearded man who’d been standing out of Draco’s line of sight. A spell, cast by Bones, flew wide. “I was waiting for you.”

“So I heard. Thought you’d entertain yourself in my Pensieve?”

“Granger offered to let me see this one,” Draco said, preoccupied with watching Potter ram his shoulder into the bearded man’s stomach. The man went down with a grunt and pulled Potter with him as he started to fall down the steep and claustrophobic-looking flight of stairs half-hidden behind him.

“Harry!” Bones shouted, and took a step towards them, but then her eyes widened and she barely got a shield cast in time to ward off a nasty-looking dark red hex coming from one of the doorways. Another spell came flying at her from a _different_ doorway, and from both of those directions, there was suddenly someone advancing at her.

Draco’s respect for the former Hufflepuff shot through the roof as he watched the girl he’d always thought of as meek and timid begin to fire off spells. Bones was _clever_ ; she didn’t focus on getting through the defenses of one opponent at the risk of leaving herself vulnerable to the other. Instead she used the environment to her advantage to buy herself time. A chandelier came flying at the man and forced him to dodge, distracting him just long enough for Bones to turn the floor beneath the woman’s feet to slippery ice. As she flailed, a spell hurled two chairs at the man to keep him occupied, and the woman only managed to cast a single curse, which went wide, before a bright light flashed right in front of her face and messed with her eyesight.

“Fucking hells,” Draco breathed, as they kept going and going.

“Yeah, she’s good,” Blaise agreed. “Shame she quit after Potter died. I mean, it’s understandable – losing a partner is traumatic at the best of times – but still.”

The rage in the woman’s eyes was reaching proportions that reminded Draco uncomfortable of Bellatrix. When he heard the incantation he’d been dreading but knew was coming, he took a deep breath and reminded himself forcefully that nothing in this memory could actually hurt him. That included the Fiendfyre.

“You don’t have to make yourself watch this,” Blaise said in a strangely gentle tone.

“I want to,” Draco said.

Things went a bit blurry as the Fiendfyre began to rage. Bones finished off one opponent, then the other, but they kept her preoccupied for too long. She spotted Harry’s wand and picked up with haste, and then turned in the direction of the stairs with horror on her face.

“Harry!” she screamed, and the fear in her voice was so tangible it hurt to hear. “Harry, _get out_!”

She fought valiantly. Draco could have told her there was no point, and maybe she knew, maybe she only fought because she couldn’t bear the thought of running without trying all she could to save her partner. Again and again, she battled back the fiery creatures coming at her, tried to make headway, screaming Harry’s name as sweat and tears ran down her face and she started to cough.

Draco felt Blaise’s grip on his elbow, puling him out of the Pensieve. He couldn’t stop a breath of utter relief from leaving him when he found himself back in the Thought Room, no Fiendfyre to be seen.

“That’s essentially all there was to it,” Blaise said as he directed the silvery memory back into its vial. “She was forced to abandon him shortly after we left. Struggled to conjure a Patronus for help, but she managed it eventually. They couldn’t get the fire under control until it was far too late.”

Draco swallowed hard. “And they’re sure Potter didn’t manage to escape from that basement somehow?”

“They looked at both the ruins and the floorplans. It was an enclosed space, no windows, no secret tunnels.”

“Backup wand?” Draco proposed.

“Bones said he wasn’t in the habit of carrying one. No reason he would have had one for this particular mission and not tell her. Besides, even if he’d had one, there were Anti-Apparition wards up, and I can’t think of another way he could have gotten past the Fiendfyre. Regular fire, maybe, but not this stuff.”

“Something must have been overlooked.”

“They found two human skeletons down there,” Blaise said gently. “Couldn’t identify them with complete accuracy – they were charred and fused and half-melted – but it stands to reason that those were the only two people who were down there. And even if there is some strange way Potter managed to save himself…I can’t see any reason he would have put his loved ones through that, letting them think he was dead for over two years. No, Draco, he died in that place. He truly did. I don’t know how to explain him being here, but we don’t know enough about death to understand it, perhaps ever.”

Draco sighed.

Blaise went to a chest next to his desk and came back with two bottles of butterbeer. Draco accepted one gratefully. His throat felt dry and scratchy.

“How’s the lab set-up coming along?” Blaise asked.

Draco had been given a space in one of the empty offices between the Time Room and the Hall of Prophecy. One of the first things he had done after completing the basic setup was to look at a drop of Potter’s blood both with magic and a Muggle microscope, and subsequently curse up a storm.

“That’s actually what I wanted to speak to you about. I’ll need a type of stirring rod I don’t have, and ordinarily I would owl-order it, but those always take a while to be processed, and I’d like to avoid delays.”

“What kind of stirring rod?” Blaise asked, knitting his brow. 

“Crystal. Quartz, to be precise, as pure as possible.”

“Who might sell one of those?”

Draco made a face. “I can give you a list of who _doesn’t_ sell one, which is pretty much everyone around the area. Versatile Vials in Hogsmeade is the only one that may possibly carry them, they’ve got some of the more obscure equipment. But they wouldn’t tell me even if they did; the owner hates me.

“Sounds promising,” Blaise said. “Luckily, I’m wearing this very official uniform and am not afraid to use it. Let’s go fetch our cloaks, no sense in wasting time.”

He invited Draco to walk ahead of him with a ridiculous flourish. They made their way to the lifts, and Draco wasn’t afraid to admit he was looking forward to daylight and fresh air. He had no idea how the Unspeakables managed to work in these oppressive surroundings day in and day out.

“Why don’t you have this stirring rod already?” Blaise asked. “You’ve got the most potions equipment of anyone I’ve ever seen.”

“I shattered mine years ago. Haven’t needed to replace it, it’s not used when brewing antidotes. Unfortunately, with this batshit crazy poison Potter has managed to get himself exposed to, I _do_ need it.”

Blaise raised an eyebrow. “Batshit crazy?”

“I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ll need to neutralize it in several stages, and for the first one, I need the crystalline structure that quartz inherently has. I have to find a way to encapsulate –”

“Draco, you can’t possibly think that my eyes aren’t about to glaze over,” Blaise interrupted him as they walked to the staff Floos. “I hate potions theory with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, you’re well aware of that.”

“Sorry,” Draco said. “For a millisecond there, I forgot.”

“See that it doesn’t happen again, peasant,” Blaise said with his nose in the air, and sniffed in a disdainful way. “Wait until my father hears about this.”

“Was that…was that supposed to be an impression of me, you complete lunatic?”

Blaise didn’t bother hiding a grin.

“Merlin, that was abysmal. Don’t quit your day job.”

They emerged in the Three Broomsticks and from there stepped out into the picturesquely snow-covered village. The air was crisp and clear, with a uniformly blue sky overhead, and it was easy to see an equally snow-covered Hogwarts from here. The sight caused a pang of longing in Draco’s chest. He hadn’t been back in far too long. Apart from his work at the St Mungo’s he didn’t have much of a life at all, and there had never been a good reason for him to visit. The closest he got was the occasional Floo conversation with Poppy Pomfrey, on the exceedingly rare occasion when there was a student on his floor she wanted to check in on, or if she needed a consultation on anything potions-related.

“You never come to the reunions,” said Blaise, who’d obviously interpreted his gaze correctly.

“They don’t want me there.”

“Not true. I’ve been asked about you quite a bit over the years.”

“By the Slytherins, maybe.”

“And by Goldstein, MacDougal, the Patils…even Longbottom. People do forgive, you know.”

“Well, yes, I’m aware, else I’d be dead in a ditch somewhere by now. But it’s different when…what I did back in sixth year…” Draco shrugged, a bit helplessly. It had been so long ago, and he was no longer that person, but at the same time it felt as fresh as though it had happened yesterday. He was responsible for allowing Death Eaters into what had at the time been the ultimate sanctuary. Students had been hurt because of it. It didn’t feel right to expect a warm welcome back, now or in the future.

“You should have a good talk with Granger about it,” Blaise advised.

“Maybe,” Draco said in a non-committal tone. 

They reached Versatile Vials on a side street, and before they entered, Blaise took care to make sure his Ministry badge was on full display. Granger had promised to get Draco a consultant badge as soon as she had the time, in case his being at the ministry was ever questioned. For now, he still wore the visitor’s badge he had been issued the day before – which, to Draco’s endless amusement, proclaimed him to be _Draco Malfoy – Important Consultant in Very Secret Capacity._ Granger’s exasperation with the badge system had known no bounds.

It was rather enjoyable to watch irritable Mr. Colesworth, who had made a particularly thunderous face when he’d caught sight of Draco, hurry to accommodate them once Blaise started on his ‘I an very busy and important and could easily leave you to die in a Ministry holding cell’ routine. The man did, in fact, have three crystal stirring rods for sale, and he fetched them from the back room and grudgingly allowed Draco to take his time selecting the one with the least amount of impurities. Since they were already here, Draco decided to purchase a few difficult to find ingredients as well, anything he was moderately likely to need. Mr. Colesworth followed him around until a sharp “I will not have you harassing my consultant!” from Blaise sent him scurrying back behind the counter.

“That was the most fun I’ve ever had in that place,” Draco said when they were back out on the street. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it. To anyone. Also don’t mention that we’re making another stop for essential provisions.” And with that, Blaise dragged him into Honeydukes and bought Draco enough chocolate to keep him in good spirits for days to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #3 – Hogwarts in the snow


	4. December 4

Draco took one step into Granger’s office and then stopped abruptly. “Has that always been there?”

Granger ceased writing and lifted her head, following Draco’s gaze to the fire dancing merrily in a fireplace that looked wholly unfamiliar to Draco, who had been in this office quite a bit during the past two days.

“Oh,” she said. “No. It’s not real.”

“It isn’t? It’s radiating heat, though. And I can hear it crackling.” Draco extended a hand and moved it through the warm air. “That’s a very good illusion.”

The older woman who was sitting on the stool near the fire started at him waving his hand around. She was wearing headphones and obviously hadn’t heard him entering.

The corner of Granger’s mouth twitched. “Yes, well, Ron and George wanted it to be as realistic as possible. They put quite a bit of work into it.”

“It’s a Wheezes product?”

“Yes. It only lasts for about four and a half hours, but it creates such a nice atmosphere, don’t you think?” She smiled tenderly at the flames.

Draco had, in fact, been thinking that exact thing. “Makes the room feel quite cosy. Should be popular during the holiday season.”

“Yes, they hope so. Ron’s been working incredibly hard to get it polished in time. He’s got two more to put finishing touches on; one’s a window that gives you a realistic view of a snowy landscape – Ron wants it to feel like actual cold glass when it’s touched, so children can press their noses against it as they look outside – and the other a decorated tree with fairy lights, which should make the room smell like pine.”

“Oh,” Draco said, “ _windows_. You lot need to order those in bulk for the department.”

She laughed. “I won’t argue with that. Some of their products are downright ridiculous, but the atmospheric illusions are lovely. Ron looked quite pleased when I told him that. I think he’s planning on giving me a huge pile of them for Christmas.”

Draco’s half-smile faded when he thought of something.

“Does he know? Your husband? About…”

Their eyes both went to Harry, lying peacefully in his makeshift bed.

“No,” Granger said softly. “No, I haven’t…he’s been so incredibly busy at the shop, and there’s nothing he can _do_ , you know. It seemed unfair to tell him and expect him to just keep working like nothing’s happened, but it’s also unfair to George if Ron’s distracted because he’s worrying about Harry. If Harry wakes, I’ll tell him in a heartbeat, but now…” She sighed, looking conflicted.

Draco couldn’t claim to understand, but then, he didn’t have a significant other he could decide to keep secrets from. He cleared his throat. “I was coming to take more blood, actually,” he said.

“Oh.” Granger’s eyes widened. “Are things not going well?”

“They’re going well enough, but it’s a ridiculously complex poison. It’s…I’m basically…” He sighed and rubbed his temples. “It’s complicated, and I keep thinking in circles.”

“Show me,” she said, and pushed her chair back. “I haven’t done complex antidotes since sixth year, but I’m sure it’ll come back to me soon enough.”

If it had been anyone else, Draco would have been annoyed at having to play teacher, but he thought Granger might actually be able to keep up with his explanation, and that could only be beneficial. He wasn’t arrogant enough to believe he was infallible.

“Sure. I’d just like to get the blood first though.” He dug in his pocket for the muggle hypodermic needle and syringe he needed. When he held it up, Granger’s eyes narrowed.

“What’s that for?”

“I’ve found it works better for me than using my wand. If I draw the blood out and into a vial with magic, it passes through the air, which can include contaminants. On top of that, I don’t know enough about the poison to be sure my magic won’t affect it in some way. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Granger looked surprised, and then approving.

Draco knelt next to Harry’s body and then looked up at the woman with the shaved head. “That’s…Muriel, right? The one I haven’t met yet?”

“Marielle,” Granger corrected. “Yes. She agreed to interrupt her maternity leave to help maintain Harry’s stasis.”

“That’s kind.”

“She’s the Unspeakable responsible for the Love Room, so that should tell you enough about the sort of person she is.”

Draco’s eyebrows shot up. “I thought that room was always locked?”

“Well, yes, generally, but we do need to do a certain amount of maintenance on it. She’s careful not to spend too much time in there, she says she’ll never want to leave otherwise. I was told that before the decision was made to keep it locked, there were actually a few people who died because they refused to leave it. Or, when they did, the sudden absence of all the emotion they’d felt in the room literally caused a lethal shock.”

“On one hand, that sounds terrifying,” Draco said. “On the other hand…call me morbid, but it sounds peaceful, dying in there.”

Granger looked uncomfortable. Draco was opening his mouth to try and clarify he hadn’t meant to sound suicidal, but she shook her head and cleared her throat. “Anyway…out of the lot of us, Marielle is best equipped to handle the room. She’s been through a lot in life, love and loss and everything in between. She understands it as well as anyone can hope to, I think.”

Marielle seemed to realize they were talking about her, because her eyes met Draco’s, and she gave him a smile before taking off the headphones with her free hand.

“Do you need anything from me?” she asked. “Or from Harry, I suppose?”

She had a hint of an accent, French, Draco was almost certain. Her voice was melodious and pleasant.

“I need to take some blood,” he explained.

She adjusted the grip on her wand and nodded.

“Do you mind if I use his left arm, despite all of these?” Draco asked, indicating the obscured writing. “I’ve taken from the right one twice already, and since his blood isn’t flowing because of the stasis, the section of vein I take it from stays empty. The more I take from one spot, the harder I have to suction, and that can damage the vein. I’d like to avoid collapsed veins and haematomas once he’s out of stasis.

Granger gazed up at him and blinked several times. Then she said, “Sorry. Yes, of course you can use the left arm. It’s just, I kept thinking of you as a potioneer who happens to work at a hospital. I’m feeling like a right tit because obviously you _are_ a fully trained healer.”

“I did do a sort of apprenticeship with a muggle haematologist as well, actually,” Draco said as he disinfected the crook of Potter’s elbow with a swipe of his wand. There was a bit of writing there, quite small, that he’d have to avoid. “The father of one of the Muggleborn trainee healers. Almost every poison is carried by blood or affects it in some way, it would have been extremely daft not to learn everything I could.”

He drew the blood with sure movements, wincing when he had to fight against the plunger’s resistance.

“So, you’re basically creating a vacuum in the vein?” Granger asked.

“Precisely. Normally I wouldn’t have to force it at all.”

“ _Interesting_ ,” she said, watching intently.

Draco finished with the syringe and conjured up a small patch to stick on the skin. The stasis wouldn’t allow for any healing spells either, since those amplified and sped up the skin’s natural tendency to knit itself back together, and that tendency was currently inert.

“I meant to ask,” he said as his fingertips brushed the blurry black letters. “Have you checked if the things written on his arm are actually…well, true? I mean, obviously he’s poisoned alright, but are there other facts written down that could be checked?”

Granger gnawed on her lip. She looked like she was internally debating something, so he waited while he cleaned up and Vanished the used needle.

“Why do you ask that?”

“Idle curiosity, really. You said before that some of it looked like sensitive information. I’ve been wondering how and why it’s all written down on his skin, but I haven’t been able to come up with a plausible reason. Unless he thought he might be obliviated, but…well, none of it quite fits. The poison message wasn’t there because he might be obliviated, it was because he knew he wouldn’t be conscious to tell anyone.”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

She sighed and threw a quick glance Marielle’s way. The other woman smiled and put her headphones back on without a comment.

“One of them says something else that’s true, but there was no way he could have known. There was no way _anyone_ could have known, not even me. I only found out when I went home and checked, last night. It’s…I don’t know if they’re some form of divination, or…”

“Can you tell me what it is?” he asked.

Granger hesitated, but then reached for her wand and pushed up Harry’s sleeve. She circled a cluster of medium-sized letters with the tip of it, and they unscrambled.

_HERMIONE’S PREGNANT_

_Don’t put her in danger._

Draco stared for a long moment.

“It’s true and _you_ didn’t know it?” he asked.

Granger shook her head. “I’m not far along,” she said. “I had no idea. It wasn’t planned.”

“Congratulations,” Draco said reflexively.

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks. It hasn’t really sunk in. Frankly, it’s not my biggest worry right now; I’ll process it when I have the time to.”

“Very practical of you.” Draco straightened up. After obscuring the letters once more, Granger followed suit.

“Lab?” she asked.

“Lab,” Draco agreed.

~*~

“It took me a while to figure out how this poison actually works.” Draco slid over another ingredient for Granger to prepare while he finished his latest set of calculations. “It’s a bit insane, actually. It enters the bloodstream – I’m not sure how, since I can’t biopsy Potter’s lungs or stomach lining, but that’s not my major concern right now – and from there attaches itself to cells in the tissue. The thing is, when I looked at what remained in the blood, and what’s attacking the cells…they’re _different_. The poison actually changes as it transfers, and I have no idea how it does that.”

“Can you find out?” she asked.

“Well, yes, but it would take far too long, so that’s a problem.”

Granger nodded. “The same antidote wouldn’t work to cleanse both forms of the poison.”

“Exactly. There are ways of getting around it though.”

“Golpalott’s Third Law?” she asked. “I assume you’re treating it like a blended poison?”

“Yes and no. If my task was to create a single drinkable antidote for this crazy thing, I would. But I don’t need to in order to help Potter.”

“Because…?”

“Do you know why Golpalott is necessary? The theory behind it, I mean?”

Granger frowned down at her cutting board. Her chopping motions were precise and consistent. “It’s because antidote A and antidote B might have ingredients or elements that interact badly with each other if there is no buffering or binding agent.”

“Exactly,” Draco confirmed. “If I were to simply pour them both into the same vial, they would end up mixing together and reacting to each other and create all sorts of strange effects. Best case scenario, they’ll start neutralizing each other and you’re left with a weak partial antidote.”

“Which would be bad, obviously.”

“Yes. But this case is different, because the antidote doesn’t need to have a shelf life, therefore we can avoid having to combine anything in a single vial. We can also avoid having them mixing together in his stomach as they wait to be absorbed. I plan to inject them directly into the blood.”

“Oh,” Granger breathed. “I never even thought of that being a possibility.”

“Wizards don’t really have an equivalent, or even much of a concept that it’s possible,” Draco said ruefully. “We don’t even _draw_ blood that way, so poking a hole into a vein to try and put something _into_ it is…well…let’s just say the older, more traditional healers at St Mungo’s foamed at the mouth when I returned to work after studying with the haematologist. Antidotes are traditionally something you drink, but that’s very limiting, in the end.”

“So, you’ll brew two antidotes and inject them both,” Granger summed up.

“Yes. I’ll inject them in as many places as possible, it’s faster than doing only a single injection and waiting for everything to be distributed. But I’ll alternate. So you’ll have a vein…” Draco raised his forearm and drew a line from the inside of his wrist to his elbow, “…and the first injection here will be a small bit of antidote A.” He tapped his index finger on his wrist. “Next one, a bit of antidote B.” He tapped a spot an inch higher up. “Then A again, then B, and so on. When we take him out of stasis and his blood flows again, they’ll be washed everywhere very quickly.”

“Is there a chance they’ll mix together while they’re in the blood?”

“No, it’ll take effect too fast. They won’t have time to.”

“Hmm.” Granger scraped the minced ginger root into a neat pile and slid it Draco’s way. “Clever.”

Draco raised an eyebrow. “Thanks.” He looked down at the calculations he’d just done, and frowned. “I just don’t know if…” He trailed off.

“What? And can I do anything else?”

“Horn of Bicorn. I need five and a half grams, finely ground, please. And I’m trying to calculate the rate at which the poison damages the cells, and compare it to the rate at which the antidote will seek it out. I think we’ll need something else that will work to keep him stable when we take him out of stasis, else he’ll deteriorate too fast and we risk losing him before the antidote has much of a chance to work.” He sighed and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “I don’t know whether to kill or admire the cleverness of whatever insidious arse came up with this stuff.”

“No reason it can’t be both,” Granger said reasonably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #4 - Fire in a fireplace


	5. December 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to say thank you for all the wonderful comments on this story so far - they're heartening to read and help encourage me to stick with it. I'm very, very appreciative. 
> 
> And speaking of appreciative, Etalice has been the absolute champion of the quick beta and master of valuable comments for this chapter! 
> 
> Lastly, I'd like to extend my sincere apologies to anyone who has any actual Chemistry knowledge. Reading the magical theory in this one will probably be like fingernails on a chalkboard.

“You know, if you hadn’t warned me that your husband was working on a tree illusion, I’d have sworn that was real,” Draco said. The medium-sized spruce was standing in the spot where the fireplace had been the day before. It was covered in snow and decorated with bronze and white star-patterned ornaments, classy and lovely. Draco was surprised by Weasley’s restraint. He would have thought, if anything, his idea of a decorated Christmas tree would have looked like a group of five-year-olds had gone crazy with parchment, scissors, and an assortment of Witch Winnifred’s Glitterific Practice Wands.

“Hm?” Granger asked and raised her head from the file she’d been glaring at as though it had personally offended her. “Oh. No, no, that one actually is real.”

“Oh,” Draco said, feeling extremely foolish.

“The snow’s fake,” Granger added. “But, I mean…I know it’s silly since Harry isn’t even conscious to see it, I just couldn’t keep from, well…”

Draco thought that perhaps he understood. It had to be difficult for her, waiting for the antidote. There was little she could do for Harry right now, and after two years spent mourning him, that _had_ to feel maddening.

“I did already point out to her that he isn’t even awake to see it,” Smith said from the corner with an exaggerated sigh, apparently assuming Draco would agree with him.

Granger’s jaw clenched.

“He’ll love seeing it when he wakes up,” Draco said pointedly.

Smith snorted derisively. “Yes, I’m sure aesthetics will be his first priority at that point. Have you seen Penny? She was supposed to take over ages ago.” He switched his wand to his other hand and rotated his wrist.

“You’ve got three minutes left on your shift, actually,” said Granger sweetly. “But I’m sure I can send out a Patronus and let her know you got tired early.”

Draco approved of the pettiness. Smith huffed and tried to pretend that wasn’t what he’d meant, but just then, Blaise came hurrying into the room.

“Change of plans,” he said, and flashed them all a smile. “Penelope was forced to go and process a prophecy that just came in, so I’m here in her stead. Lovely tree, Granger.”

“She could have come here and _I_ could have done it,” Smith said petulantly, and Draco marvelled at the fact that his nose was still so straight when he had the most punch-able sulky expression Draco had ever seen.

“I’m sure we’re all very sad for your missed opportunity,” said Blaise as he wrapped his stasis field around Smith’s with a complicated, jerky wand motion. He turned towards the stool as though waiting for it to be vacated, which didn’t happen. Smith only crossed his arms and glared.

“Maybe we should start celebrating birthdays in this department,” Granger sighed, “to remind us all how old we’re supposed to be.” She wrote something on her file and then closed it. “Sorry, Malfoy, you’ve been waiting. Did you need something?”

“Not as such, no. But I did want to let you know that I think…I think I might’ve actually figured it out.”

“Really,” Smith said, sounding sceptical.

“Yes, really. Well, I haven’t figured out how to eliminate the poison still in the bloodstream –”

“So you _haven’t_ figured it out, you’re just hoping we won’t notice,” Smith scoffed.

“Zach, shut up,” Granger said.

“Why should I? I told you he couldn’t do it right from the start, and yet you –”

“Lovely as it is to listen to your _dulcet_ tones,” Blaise interrupted him, “maybe you’d be so kind as to let the certified _expert_ in the room finish speaking?”

“Thank you, Blaise,” said Draco. “If you had let me finish, you would have realized that I _have_ managed to find a temporary solution.”

“How long would that last?” Granger asked, sounding suddenly eager.

“Indefinitely, in theory. There’s just no way for me to understand all there is to understand about this poison from one day to the next, so I’ve circumvented actually having to deal with this yet-to-mutate form in the blood. Eliminating the one already in the cells is fairly straightforward.”

“ _Circumventing_ is not how antidotes work,” said Smith.

“True,” Draco said mildly, and Smith looked surprised for a moment. “Unless you actually know what you’re talking about, of course.”

The corner of Granger’s mouth twitched as Smith scowled.

“I’ve had this theory for a while but never a reason to try it out. The risk with eliminating a magical substance that can _change_ is that sometimes, you accidentally end up creating something worse because the magical component gives the substance a kind of flexibility that it doesn’t have in the chemical sense. Essentially…” Draco sighed and tried to find words that would be clear enough so even Smith couldn’t misconstrue them. “Ordinarily, you’ve got your poison, you’ve got your antidote, they bind together and create something harmless that the body can simply metabolize. _This_ thing has proven that it can change. The magic is what’s telling it ‘hey, once you find a certain type of cell to cling to, change your molecular structure so you can do something you couldn’t do before’ – presumably something that damages the cell in some way. There is no reason those who created it couldn’t have put a second bit of magic on it saying ‘hey, if you encounter any substance that starts to bind with you, rip it apart and use the pieces to change your molecular structure in a different way’.”

“What kind of way?” Smith asked, still sounding sceptical.

“Depends on the substance. They might, I don’t know, create an exothermic reaction – boil your blood.”

Smith pulled a face. Blaise winced. Granger looked fascinated.

“Is there a limit to how many different magical...conditions, I suppose, and reactions can be put on a substance?” she asked. Draco got the distinct impression she was barely resisting the temptation to start taking notes. Some things never changed, he thought, although what _had_ changed was Draco’s perception of them. Granger’s love of learning was quite the asset.

“No idea,” he told her. “I could probably write an entire thesis trying to figure it out.”

“So how do you actually deactivate the poison?” she asked eagerly.

“What I’ve basically done is created something that acts as a sort of cage. It binds the poison, just like a normal antidote might, but the poison can’t use it to change itself because the cage is a crystalline structure, which is a more rigid arrangement of molecules. It can’t be torn apart as easily and used to create something else.”

 _“Oh!”_ Granger breathed and looked suitably impressed.

“I’m lost,” Blaise admitted, his eyes not moving from Potter, “but it sounds impressive.”

Smith’s mouth was open now, as though he had finally realized that he was not the ultimate authority on what was and wasn’t possible in the field of antidote creation.

“So, they’ll still be in the blood but harmless, and it gives me time to create something that’ll actually eliminate them,” Draco finished.

“How could you even manage to _do_ that?” Smith, yet again.

Draco lifted his hands, spread his fingers apart and whispered dramatically, “Magic!”

~*~

“I’m…” Granger trailed off, swallowing hard. She looked at the tree, bronze decorations gleaming in the light of the most recent illusion-fireplace she had decided to deploy. Draco thought he might just have to purchase a set of his own. The way they warmed the room literally and figuratively was wonderful – not that he’d ever tell Weasley that. Even Draco’s adult sensibilities had their limits. 

“You’re what?” Blaise asked with uncharacteristic gentleness.

“I’m _scared_ ,” Granger admitted, her face crumpling. “What if this doesn’t work? What if we kill him with it? What if taking him out of stasis turns out to be a mistake?”

Draco tried not to be offended, because he had a fairly good idea of the place her worries were coming from. “I wouldn’t be proposing this if I wasn’t sure it’ll work,” he said.

“And we can’t keep the stasis up for much longer anyway,” Blaise pointed out. “Not without pulling in more people, which I don’t think would be a good idea because we _will_ have a leak then. But we’re all exhausted and doing literally nothing else, and we can’t sustain that.”

“You’re right.” Granger nodded and visibly pulled herself together. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…sorry.”

Draco capped the green marker he’d been using to highlight the spots where he would inject the serum to help fight cell decay into Potter’s body. He hadn’t needed to brew it fresh, thank Merlin, because that might have taken a month or two. It was still in an experimental stage – he’d been trying to develop something to help the formerly poisoned patients in his ward recover for a while – but this entire operation was experimental, and it was the best option they had.

Potter’s skin was covered in four colors of markings now – the mysterious writings in black, then dots for the blood antidote in red, and for the cell antidote in blue, and now the occasional, strategically placed X in green for the serum. It was by far the most complex detoxification he had ever attempted.

“Is there a rhyme or reason for placing those as you did?” Blaise asked. “The green ones, I mean. Obviously, they’re not following the same pattern as the other two.”

“It’s mostly guesswork,” Draco admitted, reaching for his final syringe. Granger made a displeased sound, because clearly it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but he wasn’t about to lie to her either. “I’m trying to protect the most essential systems the best I can. If he loses the use of his hands, that’s too bad, but we can try to fix it later. If he loses the use of his lungs, well, we might not get around to worrying about his hands.”

A short, oppressive moment of silence later, Granger huffed out a humorless laugh. “I was waiting for Zach to make a scathing remark, just now,” she said. “I’m so glad he went off to sleep. I’m not anywhere near calm enough to keep from hexing him.”

“Why in Merlin’s name does he even work here?” Draco asked as he began to inject the serum with care. “He’s utterly insufferable.”

“Unfortunately, he spent several years after Hogwarts developing an interest in Runic Divination.” Draco couldn’t see Granger rolling her eyes, but he was certain that’s what she was doing. “It’s a ridiculously obscure field of study that he apparently managed to learn from some witch in Iceland, but our former department head – Adolphius bloody Widdleway, you may have heard of him, he had that scandalous whirlwind romance with Celestina Warbeck shortly after he quit the Ministry because of some ridiculous midlife crisis – well, anyway, he had the grand idea of hiring Zacharias to study the oldest prophecies we have stored here. They go back shockingly far, and some of the earliest ones feature runes in a way that nobody quite understands anymore. Widdleway thought we could decipher and study them and eventually develop revolutionary new divination techniques in some unspecified way that he never really bothered to think about for more than two minutes.”

“Obviously, Granger is only concerned for the integrity of the department and not at all bitter,” said Blaise.

“I’m really not!” she protested.

“Fine,” Blaise conceded, “you’re not bitter. You just really hate divination.”

“I won’t bother trying to deny that one,” she said. “But in the time since he joined the Department of Mysteries, Zach has never shared any noticeable progress. Have you seen any proof of it? Sometimes I think he just leaves runic books lying around on his desk for show and then sits there reading the new Witch Weekly.”

“You may be onto something there,” Blaise sighed.

“Who in Merlin’s name is he accountable to?” Draco asked. He finished the last injection and straightened his aching back. By now, Potter’s skin was riddled with tiny bumps where the antidotes and the serum pooled under the skin and waited to be carried away once blood flow was restored.

“Oh, we do technically have a department head,” said Granger. “Ursula Rothschild.”

“Lovely old lady,” Blaise added. “Cute as a button. Fun to flirt with, though a bit naïve and hard of hearing.”

“She’s never worked down here, because some higher up cleverly decided that sort of experience wasn’t needed to oversee us.” Hermione sighed. “Idiotic, but she’s what we’ve got. She’s far too nice to fire Zach for anything but egregious misconduct.”

“Or murder,” Blaise said. “Perhaps murder would do it.”

“Isn’t that also a form of misconduct?” Draco pointed out. “Right, that’s it. Four days and two hundred and twelve ingredients, just for the record, but I’ve done as much as I can. Once the stasis is gone, everything should happen quite quickly.”

“Oh,” Granger breathed, and clutched his arm. “Draco, I, I…thank you for doing this.”

The use of his first name took him by surprise, but he wasn’t about to quibble. Not now.

“He probably won’t wake up,” he reminded her, and paused to cast a _Tempus_ with which to measure the rate of recovery. “We’ll have a few days of potions and healing spells ahead of us before that’s likely to happen.”

“Right, but still. As long as the poison goes.” Granger bit her lip and reached out to take Potter’s hand. “Ready, Blaise.”

“You got it,” Blaise responded, and dropped the spell without ceremony.

Potter’s body shuddered. For a long, tense moment, nothing else happened, but then his chest gradually started to rise.

“We’ve got lungs,” Draco said softly.

“Pulse,” Granger whispered, seconds later.

For a time, their anxious breathing and the occasional crackle of the fire were the only sounds in the room. Draco had rarely felt so on edge. Everything but the body before him seemed to fade away.

Three, four, five minutes passed. The antidote and serum bumps under the skin vanished gradually. Potter twitched, twice.

“That’s the central nervous system,” said Draco quietly.

Seven minutes.

Potter’s throat moved, and a soft, broken keening sound made its way through his slightly parted lips.

“He’s in pain,” Granger whispered.

“Yes,” Draco said.

Once again, Potter’s body shuddered, and kept shuddering.

“His…” Blaise hesitated. “His skin is turning yellow.”

 _“What?”_ Granger asked, alarmed.

“It’s fine,” Draco assured her. “It’s the poison. He’s starting to sweat it out faster than I thought.”

Eight minutes.

Ten.

Twelve. Draco siphoned the layer of yellow-tinted sweat into a prepared vial. Potter continued to sweat.

“He’s…that means it’s working, right?” Granger asked hesitantly, as though dreading the answer.

“It’s working,” Draco confirmed. “Very well, actually.”

At sixteen minutes, Potter’s body ceased shaking.

At seventeen minutes, it ceased sweating.

At twenty-two minutes, Granger started crying with sheer relief and smiled through her tears.

At thirty-seven minutes, Potter’s eyes fluttered open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #5 – A decorated tree covered in snow


	6. December 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit late. I know it happened right after a cliffhanger, and I apologize for torturing everyone, but I wanted to make sure that the plot of these next few chapters was well and truly polished and any small inconsistencies ironed out. A huge thank you once again to Etalice, who has just been invaluable to me, as a beta reader, plot-helper, and cheerleader.

Draco had no idea what to expect when he entered Granger’s office the next day. 

After Potter had opened his eyes, he had been dazed and disoriented, and it had taken him almost ten minutes until he’d reacted to their presence. When he had been in a shape to start speaking, Granger had unceremoniously thrown Draco and Blaise out of her office. Rationally, Draco understood her decision. The rest of him, however, had wanted to throw a fit the likes of which hadn’t been seen since his third year at Hogwarts, because there were just so many questions he wanted the answer to, and waiting for them when they were so _close_ was one of the most torturous things he’d ever experienced.

“Afternoon,” he said briskly, in his most professional healer voice. Potter looked up from where he was sitting comfortably, propped up by blankets against the little safe in the corner, in which, Draco guessed, Granger kept all of the books she thought too valuable to put on the bookshelves that ran along the far wall.

Green eyes – behind an unfamiliar set of glasses that Granger must have brought in – looked him up and down. Draco was shocked by how many of the old insecurities immediately rose up in him. He’d thought himself long past those. He found himself wishing he was wearing his official-looking healer’s robes, or at least had a Muggle stethoscope to hang about his neck, which he had noticed during his apprenticeship was at least ninety-five percent of the trick to looking important and knowledgeable in a Muggle hospital.

“Malfoy,” said Potter hoarsely, and then, “Is it?”

“Is what?” Draco asked distractedly. He made a mental note to procure a throat soothing potion.

“Afternoon,” said Potter and lifted a hand to indicate his surroundings. “It’s difficult to tell in here.”

“Oh. Yes, it’s afternoon, about a quarter to five. How are you feeling?”

Potter looked amused. “That’s rather a loaded question.”

“Well.” Draco cleared his throat. He felt wrong-footed. None of his patients had ever had him quite as tempted to blurt out a hundred questions at once and at the same time made him wonder to what degree their opinions of him might have changed over the past eight-ish years.

Harry continued to look at him. Draco couldn’t help but wonder what it was he saw.

“You’re wanting to ask me a lot of the same questions as Hermione, aren’t you?”

Draco cleared his throat. “Well, I…yes, I suppose. Mostly I want to check what condition your body is in after the detox, though.”

“Oh, right.” Potter glanced down at himself like he could figure out the answer that way. Then he gave Draco a weak but guileless smile and leaned back comfortably. “Okay.”

A basic diagnostic spell was first to monitor both heart rate and breathing rate. Another more advanced one allowed the larger veins and arteries to shine through Potter’s skin. As Draco watched carefully for any irregularities, Potter watched _him_ , and Draco should have been used to that, _was_ used to that, but Potter was apparently an exception, just like he seemed to be in every other capacity. The silence seemed to buzz and crackle between them.

It was strange, he thought, that he’d managed to fall into a pleasant camaraderie with Granger almost immediately, yet Potter still seemed able to make him feel insecure and awkward simply by being in the same room.

“I know you’re wondering,” Potter said eventually, quietly. “I know you all are. It’s not easy to talk about.”

Draco nodded briskly. “You don’t owe it to me,” he said. “Granger, probably, but not me.” Another spell, lungs this time, searching for any damage. Looking intently at a patient’s chest had never been an issue for Draco – until now. Of course. He decided to busy himself with feeling for weak spots in the tissues of Potter’s right arm at the same time, just to keep busy.

“Right, ‘course not, you only saved my life, after all,” Harry said amicably.

Draco’s hands clenched around the arm far more tightly than he’d meant for them to.

“I’m a healer, Potter,” he said quietly. “It’s my job, it’s what I _do_. No patient who leaves my ward owes me a life debt or any other.”

“Fair point,” Potter conceded, looking remorseful.

“Mhm,” Draco said and kept digging his thumbs in.

“Still, Hermione said it was difficult, and she was impressed by how dedicated you were to figuring out a solution.”

Draco’s mouth twitched. “Granger said that, did she? That’s good to know, I’ll have to give her a hard time about it.”

“Crap!” Potter groaned. “Please don’t, you’ll get me in trouble.”

“See, _now_ you owe me. I lulled you into a false sense of security and used it against you, like the Slytherin I am.”

Draco regretted the words as soon as they had left his mouth, but Potter surprised him by laughing like he found it genuinely funny.

“Alright,” Potter said and blinked at him, “How’s that: I’ll give you one question in exchange for your silence in the matter.”

“Seriously?”

“I think I can handle it. Hermione’s already gotten some of it out of me, too. You need to know, though, that there are apparently a few gaps in my memory, so I might not be able to answer.”

Draco nodded and paused in his examination for a moment so he could think. What was likely to give him the most satisfactory answer? Asking about the writing? The poison? Demanding an explanation as to how Potter had survived the Fiendfyre? He wasn’t sure how long it might be until there was a chance for him to find out anything else.

Eventually, he settled on, “Where were you for two years?”

“In a cairn,” Potter said.

Draco, who had been in the process of reaching for his wand to cast yet another diagnostic spell, faltered. “A _cairn?_ As in, an ancient burial mound?”

“Exactly that,” said Potter. “And if you’re wondering how I came to be there, I’ll tell you that too, because it’s a ridiculous answer: The stupid thing had a hole in the top that the grass had grown over, and when I stepped on it, I fell in.”

Draco burst out laughing. He hadn’t meant to, because the fact remained that Potter had been presumed dead for two years, and there was nothing funny about that, but hearing about something so mundane when he had expected some manner of epic tale, well…

“Sorry,” he choked out eventually.

“I know,” Potter said, looking rueful. “If it hadn’t happened to me or had such enormous consequences, I’d be laughing too.”

“Alright, I’ll bite. Why in Merlin’s name weren’t you able to just walk out of the bloody thing?”

Potter sighed and rolled his shoulders, probably stiff from all the sitting. “That answer’s not so easy. Has to do with something that happened at the battle of Hogwarts.”

“Right,” Draco said, suddenly feeling much more sombre. 

A very long silence spread through the room. Even the tree in the corner seemed suddenly careful not to rustle its needles. Draco looked down, then back up, and realized he was finished with all the essential parts of Potter’s health check. He cleared his throat.

“Right. Well. I’ll need to be back tomorrow, but so far –”

“I died,” Potter said softly.

“I’m sorry, what?” Draco’s eyes flicked to the only diagnostic spell he hadn’t cancelled yet. “The stasis didn’t –”

Potter chuckled. “Not now. I meant years ago, at the battle. Voldemort, he…” He sighed wearily. “It’s complicated. There were a lot of factors at play, but essentially, he used my blood to resurrect himself, and by doing that, he accidentally tethered me to him. When he killed me but remained alive himself, that tether brought me back. It didn’t take very long – I came back a few seconds later, if that, but I _was_ dead.”

“But…” Draco frowned, thinking back and trying to process. “But _you_ were able to kill _him_ , so –”

Harry grimaced. “As I said. Complicated.”

Right,” said Draco, who realized then that despite the intrigue of it, he didn’t have much desire to revisit that night either. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. But I mentioned it because the cairn was _somehow_ – and we weren’t able to figure out how because it was so bloody _old_ , but it was somehow drawing power from a ley line, and essentially it was designed to keep every living thing _outside_ it and every dead thing _inside_. And despite me having a pulse and all, being dead must have changed something in me that it recognized.”

“Oh, shit,” said Draco.

“Pretty much.”

“You said ‘we’?”

Potter winced and closed his eyes. “Not yet. Sorry.”

“Of course,” Draco said softly and tucked his wand away. “I appreciate you telling me as much as you did.”

Potter nodded.

“So, as I started saying before, I’ll need to monitor you for a few days at least as you take your potions, but everything looks like it’s recovering as it should. You heal pretty fast for a dead bloke.”

“That’s not funny,” said Granger from the door.

Draco winced, but Potter only leaned over to be able to grin at her past Draco’s head. “Relax, ‘Mione, I told him about the thing with Voldemort, that’s all.”

“Well, still. I got you a window, so you’d best be thankful.” She started digging in her handbag as she sought Draco’s gaze. “How is he looking?”

“As well as can be expected,” said Draco. “There’s still some tissue, vein, and artery damage, and his lungs aren’t quite working at full capacity, but it’s nothing the right potions and spells and a bit of rest won’t be able to fix.”

Granger’s mouth formed a relieved smile before she made a pleased noise and pulled a small silver rectangle from her handbag. She walked over to an empty bit of wall within Potter’s field of vision and slapped the rectangle on the wall with her flat palm. It expanded and rippled, and a moment later Draco was looking at a peaceful, snow-covered yard through glass that was rapidly growing ice crystals on the outside.

“Holy shit,” he said, “those are _good.”_

“Yeah, brilliant,” said Potter, sounding pleased. “Tell Ron thanks for me, will you?”

Granger made a face. “Harry, he doesn’t exactly…”

“Doesn’t what?”

“He doesn’t _know_ yet.” Granger looked guilty, her face crumpling when Potter scowled at her. “I’ll tell him tonight, I promise, Harry, there just hasn’t been a good moment.”

“Hermione –”

“Give it a rest, Potter, it’s been hard on her,” Draco said, and tried to ignore the way they both looked at him in surprise. “She’s technically not supposed to tell him anything at all, and she’s been dealing with shock and stress.”

“I’m sorry,” Potter said contritely. “It really must have been hard, if Malfoy’s even defending you.”

“Yes, because I’m an uncaring bastard any other time,” said Draco. “Cheers.”

Potter looked even more contrite and ducked his head. “I didn’t mean it that way. Sorry.”

Granger smiled at him and went to fluff his pillows. “He’s turned into a really decent person,” she said to him, just barely loud enough for Draco to hear. “Give him a chance, will you?”

“I am,” Potter protested. “Do you see me hurling insults? I mean, apart from the accidental one just now?”

“Yes, you’re a regular saint.”

They were quietly and lovingly bickering with each other, and it seemed an appropriate time for Draco to leave. He withdrew from the room without another word and returned to his temporary quarters to rest. He would have tried to actually sleep, but he was certain that racing thoughts of cairns and Voldemort and Harry dying would prevent him from it for hours to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #6 – A window covered in ice crystals


	7. December 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice continues to be invaluable and amazing and always available to help me with editing or talking plot or just giving opinions on small details.

Draco was still so bloody tired, and in such a hurry to deliver the throat-soothing potion he’d forgotten all about the day before, that he nearly ran face-first into a Christmas tree.

Which was upside down and hanging from the ceiling.

“Potter,” Draco said and blinked carefully as he tried to process this, “what the actual fuck?”

“Yes, well, I didn’t actually think it would work.” Potter, who was still on bed rest and therefore sitting once again propped up against Granger’s little safe, was looking at the tree contemplatively. “Neat though, huh?”

“I really can’t believe you just did that, mate,” someone said. Draco whipped his head around and saw Ron Weasley sitting atop Granger’s desk, arse parked right on her paperwork.

“I was experimenting,” Potter defended himself. “I’m  _ bored _ .”

Weasley shook his head. “I’m going to have to modify the directional charm. I specified horizontal surfaces thinking someone might try to put on a wall with a sticking charm, sideways-like, but it never occurred to me that some plonker might try this.” He gestured at the ceiling. There were even presents wrapped in patterned paper, and it would have been lovely if only the scene were right side up. As it was, Draco kept expecting one of them to fall on his head, even though he’d realized by now that they were illusions.

But damn, Weasley was a dab hand at illusion charms.

“I actually did you a favour then,” said Potter. “Now you have a chance to fix that flaw before you start selling it.”

Weasley shook his head, and the grin that appeared on his face was wide and happy. “I’ve missed you so bloody much, mate.”

Potter concealed his beaming smile rather badly. They looked at each other and seemed to simply bask in the joy of each other’s company for a moment, but Draco found the ensuing silence extremely awkward. He finally stepped forward and handed Potter both the throat-soothing potion and the glass of lemon water to wash it down. 

“Thanks,” said Potter and took them both. He sniffed at the water. “Is there a secret supply of lemon water around here somewhere? I’m not complaining, but why is it always lemon water? What’s with that?”

“They keep a pitcher of it in the kitchenette,” Draco explained. 

Potter stared. 

“What?” Draco asked. 

“There’s a  _ kitchenette _ in the Department of Mysteries?”

“Er,” said Draco, taken aback by the disbelief in Potter’s voice. “Yes? Did you not know that?”

“We broke into this place once,” Potter said, and downed the potion. He grimaced, presumably at the taste. “It was dark and scary and a labyrinth, and there were brains that attacked people, and endlessly shattering time turners, and things exploded and people got hurt. Sirius died. It was dangerous and terrifying and we were lucky to get out. And now there’s a  _ kitchenette.” _

“I mean,” Weasley said, “I can’t blame this lot for chosing a kitchenette over murder brains.”

“It’s an illegal kitchenette,” Draco said, “according to Granger. They aren’t supposed to have food or drink down here. Apparently the Unspeakables used to have this apparatus that allowed them to test unknown curses on animals to see what they did, and she and Clearwater and someone else broke it down and transfigured the pieces so they wouldn’t always have to run up to the cafeteria for a snack.”

“Huh,” said Potter. 

“Better than murder brains,” Weasley repeated. “Those were just…”

Draco truly didn’t want to know anything about murder brains, so he cleared his throat. “It’s none of my business, really, but Weasley, won’t your wife be rather irritated with you for crumpling all her paperwork?”

Weasley scowled immediately. Draco regretted everything.

“They’ve argued,” Potter said. “Twice. Penelope had to double up on the silencing charms, else it would have woken you for sure.”

“It was three times, actually,” said Weasley. “We were still at home for the first one.” He pressed his lips together tightly and shot a glare at Draco as though daring him to comment.

Draco, who had not taken leave of his senses, remained silent.

“You’ll cool off,” Potter said confidently. “Both of you.”

Weasley didn’t stop scowling. “You’re my best friend, and I’m yours, yeah?” he asked.

“Well, yes, Ron, I think we’ve fairly well established that throughout the past, what, fourteen years?”

“Right,” said Weasley. “So then why did my wife decide I didn’t deserve to know you were alive until several days after she knew? Why was I the  _ seventh person _ to know, after Malfoy and Zabini and bloody  _ Zacharias Smith?” _

Draco sort of saw where Weasley was coming from, because no one deserved to be bested by Smith for any reason, ever.

“You don’t know how hard it was,” Weasley said, shaking his head. “I don’t know if I can even explain what that did to me, thinking you were dead. I believed it once for five minutes, back during the war, and it nearly broke me. This time…” He swallowed and looked down. “I was lucky George and the rest of my family understood so well, you know. They helped me pull through, but it’s like everything was grey for those last two years. I couldn’t be arsed to care about a single damn thing.”

Potter looked lost and sad about that. Draco thought that Weasley was wrong about one thing though: he  _ did _ know what it was like. The war was behind them, but not so far that they could have managed to forget how much it had hurt to lose friends and family.

There was a tentative knock on the door.

“There’s an angrily crying Granger in the Hall of Prophecy,” said Blaise as he poked his head in. “I’m worried she might be tempted to throw something and forget in her rage that touching the prophecies is a very bad idea.”

“Bollocks,” said Ron, and hopped off the desk.

“Try to talk it out, yeah?” said Potter. “And remember that she’s been under a lot of stress.” His eyes found Draco’s and his mouth formed a wry grin.

“Right, yes. Fine.” Weasley ran a hand through his hair – which needed a cut rather desperately – heaved a sigh, nodded to himself, and left.

Blaise looked after them. “We may want to check on them in a little while to make sure they haven’t both sustained prophecy-induced brain damage,” he said to someone outside the room.

“That’d be nice,” said Potter. “I’ve only just gotten them back.”

Blaise took a step forward and another to the side as to make space for Clearwater, who appeared in the doorway and gave the inverted Christmas tree a puzzled look.

“Don’t ask,” said Potter.

“Okay.” She grinned at him, blue eyes sparkling with good humour, and then took a look around the room. “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

Draco hadn’t even noticed that more decorations had appeared overnight. Aside from the inverted tree and the normal one, there were now also bronze and white ornaments hanging from the bookshelves, a corner of the desk displayed a snow globe, and the little safe had been enthusiastically wrapped in silver tinsel. Draco hoped Granger wouldn’t need to access her most treasured books any time soon.

Potter shrugged. “Well, I’m still on bed rest, and I can’t leave the department, so I might as well make this place homely. Ron brought an entire box of windows and fireplaces too, see.” He pointed, and Blaise immediately went over to the small crate next to the desk and fished out one of the flat patches.

Do you mind?” he asked.

“Be my guest. Put a fireplace up while you’re at it, will you?”

A few minutes later, the room was enjoyably warm, the fire crackled, and there was a snowstorm raging outside the illusion window. Potter had invited the three of them to transfigure themselves some comfy chairs out of Granger’s spare quills, and the silence they’d fallen into after sitting down was a comfortable one.

Still, Draco didn’t mind at all when Potter broke it with a quiet, “Right. I’d like to get this over with before someone ends up trying to use legilimency on me. You want to know how I survived the Fiendfyre.”

“Yes!” Blaise said immediately and sat up straighter.

“Well, yes,” Clearwater said more softly.

“Only if you’re ready to tell us,” said Draco, and once again, Potter looked at him with surprise.

“I’ve already talked about it with Hermione,” he said. “We both had to make sense of it together, but I think I understand the things I wasn’t clear on now.”

“Wait,  _ you _ didn’t know what happened either?” Blaise asked, sounding as confused as Draco felt.

“Yes and no.” Potter leaned back comfortably. “The thing is this: until Hermione told me, I didn’t even know there was any Fiendfyre.”

_ “What?” _ the three of them said together.

Potter looked sheepish. “See, Sue and I were under horrible time pressure. We were tracking the…er, well, a _ thing _ that caused a series of suicides, two of them Hogwarts students, and we knew if we didn’t stop the hand-off, there would be more. We rushed to the mansion that was their hideout, trying to figure out where it was happening, but we assumed they’d already been given the coordinates of the meeting and apparated there because we noticed the wards were down for about half a minute as we approached.”

“Reasonable,” said Blaise.

“Not really,” said Clearwater, “because why would they even leave the coordinates lying around if they’re all gone?”

“Well, it was a bit of a desperation sort of thing, because it was our only lead,” said Potter. “And as it turned out, they  _ weren’t _ all gone.”

“I saw, in the Pensieve,” Draco told him. “That there were people left in the place.”

“I didn’t,” said Clearwater. “I didn’t even know we had that memory.”

“You never asked,” said Blaise with a shrug.

She opened her mouth but closed it again when Potter cleared his throat.

“I was actually trying to be cautious for once because I’d gotten a dressing down for being reckless the week before, but when Sue reminded me what was at stake…I went the opposite way and lost my head a little bit. Someone disarmed me, I tackled him out of sheer reflex, and then we both fell down a bunch of stairs together because of course, I hadn’t seen them until it was too late. Might still have done the same thing, though, if I had.” He scratched the side of his face. “I don’t think much, during fights like that. I just go on instinct.”

“And then Bones was attacked,” said Blaise.

“But, see, I had no idea! I was fighting with someone else, and I’d finally gotten my hands on my backup wand –”

“You had a  _ backup wand?” _ they all chorused.

Potter made a face. “Well. That’s a thing I can’t actually talk about. It had something to do with the case, and it’s something I couldn’t tell  _ anyone _ about – except Ron and Hermione – so of course, I couldn’t let Sue know either. I wasn’t expecting to be needing it, frankly.”

“Holy fuck.” Draco shook his head. “Things are beginning to make a scary amount of sense.”

Potter sighed and looked out the window for a long moment.

“Wait,” Blaise said then. “They found  _ two _ vaguely human-shaped piles of bones down there.”

“There was another man down there. I punched the first guy while he was still winded from the stair fall, caught him straight in the temple, and when he went down I grabbed my wand and Stunned him. And then I was about to go back upstairs when someone else shot a spell at me form an adjacent room. I took him out too, which wasn’t difficult, he hadn’t expected for me to be able to resist his spell, and then I glimpsed the parchment with the bloody coordinates on a table. The whole thing happened fast, in seconds. I called out to Sue right after. I didn’t know she was preoccupied, so it didn’t even occur to me that she might not hear me. I told her to secure the Stunned men, that the coordinates were here, and then…well, I apparated straight out.”

“Oh Merlin,” Draco groaned, “you’re such an idiot.”

Clearwater was shaking her head while wearing a look of stunned amazement.

“How the buggering _ fuck _ did you get past the Anti-Apparition wards?” Blaise asked.

“Er.” Potter ducked his head. “I just…sort of…blasted right through them? I can do it, sometimes, when they’re weak ones, and I think my backup wand helped too. It’s got a lot of raw power. I realized later that Sue wouldn’t have been able to follow right from the basement, but that was in the cairn, when I had plenty of time to think, and by that point, it was a bloody useless realization.”

Draco’s mind was still reeling. “You were lost for two years because you’re a  _ bloody reckless idiot _ , Potter, that’s got to be some kind of record.”

Potter winced. “It took me even longer to realize something must have happened to the coordinates before Sue could get to them. The cairn wasn’t all that far from the hand-off location, they would have found me if they’d combed the area. When no aurors showed up, I started realizing that I was in a lot more trouble than I’d thought.”

“Did you at least get to the hand-off in time?” Draco wanted to know.

Potter brightened a little bit. “Yes, actually. That was the only good thing about it, really. I apparated straight in the middle of it by pure chance, saw the, er, item in someone’s hand, made a wild grab for it and ran. They didn’t know what hit them. See, sometimes my act-now think-later is good for something.”

“Except you ended up falling into a cairn right after, so I wouldn’t gloat too much about it.”

“Yes, thanks,” said Potter as he glared at Draco. “I’ve spent two years feeling like an idiot and a failure, but feel free to pile on some more.”

“You have to admit, it’s a bit strange when everyone was so very very certain that there was no way you could have survived, and now we’re learning that the reason things went wrong in the first place was your decidedly less than clever approach to auroring,” said Blaise.

“Yes,” said Potter,  _ “I know.” _

“Leave it, Blaise,” said Clearwater gently. “Things were bad enough for Harry.”

Blaise rolled his eyes and raised his hands in a gesture of peace. “Fine, fine, yes, things were terrible for Harry, it was all very sad. I acknowledge it.”

Potter pressed his lips together until they turned white, and apparently, the good-natured teasing had finally gone too far for his taste. “Fuck you, Zabini. For  _ two years _ , I had to live off rainwater and whatever animals I could capture with the clumsy illusion traps I managed to cast on that bloody hole I fell through,” he said. “I’d like to see you figure out how to skin small rodents, and try to get some sort of message out any way possible, and fight every day not to lose your last bit of hope about ever getting out of the place.”

Blaise’s eyes widened and he looked down.

“Fucking get out, seriously,” said Potter. “I’ve told you what happened, now you know, go away.”

Blaise nodded mutely and got to his feet. “I’m...I’m sorry,” he muttered, but he didn’t try to get Potter to change his mind. Clearwater rose from her chair and followed him after touching Potter’s shoulder in sympathy. When Draco moved to leave as well, Potter waved him back.

“You can stay for a few more minutes.”

“Thanks,” said Draco, surprised, and moved his chair a little closer to the fire before he sat back down.

Potter nodded mutely. After his understandable outburst, Draco wasn’t about to press him as to why, so instead he simply closed his eyes and settled in to wait.

The crackling fire had the side effect of making him dangerously sleepy, and the comfortable chair didn’t help. He wondered if Potter would mind him taking a nap here. It couldn’t be any worse than his lumpy transfigured bed that was literally in a corner of the potions lab here in the Department of Mystery.

After what might have been five minutes or twenty, Potter said, “I know you had more questions. I don’t mind you asking them, I was just sick of everyone else taking the piss.”

Clearwater hadn’t really done that, but Draco was not about to quibble.

“The isolation must have been hell,” he said, more of an observation than a question. “You’re remarkably well-adjusted.”

“Well.” Potter frowned. When Draco glanced at him, he had leaned back against his pillows and closed his eyes, and he kept them closed when he said, “Thanks? I managed to make it a little easier on myself, that’s probably why.”

“How?”

“Can’t tell you. Sorry, it’s nothing personal, but I just have to be  _ so _ careful with this information. Maybe I will at some point.”

“You don’t have to apologize. I told you before, you don’t owe me any of these answers.” Draco had closed his eyes again. “I’ll live whether I get them or not, you know.”

A minute or so of silence descended on them like a warm blanket. If he listened closely, Draco thought he could hear the snowstorm outside the illusionary window. Then again, maybe he was imagining things.

“You’re different from what I thought,” Potter murmured.

“Am I?”

Potter hummed in the affirmative. “I’d heard you’d become a healer, but I never thought about how it might change you.”

Draco chuckled. “You’re saying all my positive qualities are due to having learned bedside manner?”

“Not all of them, no.”

“Hm.”

“I’m glad though. It’s nice you’re not a git anymore.”

Draco snorted. “Thanks?”

“You’re welcome.”

“Potter?”

“Yes?”

“How did you get out of the cairn? Did someone find you eventually?”

He heard a sigh. “I’m really tempted to just say yes and leave it at that, but it would be a lie. It’s complicated, and most of it is another thing I can’t tell you. I did it with a very strange, dangerous, sort of insane bit of magic, and it took me most of those two years to come up with it and figure out how to do it. And then a couple of weeks to work up the nerve to do it.”

“If  _ you _ of all people needed time to work up the courage, and then you came out of the bloody  _ Veil _ , it must have been something quite impressive.”

“Yes,” was all Potter said, and the fact that he wasn’t disputing it told Draco just  _ how _ impressive it had to have been. He wondered if he would ever find out how Potter had done it. The entire thing sounded completely impossible – overcoming the ancient ley line magic, and then –”

“How’d you get poisoned, and get all that writing on your skin?”

“I have no idea,” said Potter.

Draco’s eyes flew open and he sat up straight. “What?”

“I don’t know. The way I escaped shouldn’t have done any of that, not the poison, and definitely not for me to somehow write a bunch of things on my skin – because it  _ is _ my handwriting. Maybe I can find some sort of clue when I read it all.”

“You haven’t read it? Why the hell not?”

Potter shook his head. “Hermione won’t let me see them. She said it would be too overwhelming, too much at once, and I generally trust her judgement.”

“The suspense would kill me.”

Potter chuckled. “I spent two years learning to be patient. It’s fine.”

“Okay then,” Draco said sleepily.

“Do you think Ron and Hermione have calmed down by now?”

“Well, we haven’t heard a massive crash of shelves full of prophecies collapsing or had anyone run in here in a panic, so I’d guess so.”

“Excellent,” said Potter, and then nothing more for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #7 – A fully decorated, upside-down Christmas tree hanging from the ceiling.


	8. December 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice remains the best beta a writer can wish for.

“You do realize that Potter’s story has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese, don’t you?”

“Hm?” Draco asked, rather distractedly, because volatile potions ingredients and wandering attention were not a good combination.

“Potter. Story. Swiss cheese.”

Draco did not answer until the last bead of Coradine Silver was properly cushioned and inside the warded case. He closed it with a flick of his wand and turned around.

“Are you being sore because he threw you out?” he asked.

“No. I admit that was not my finest moment, and it was deserved. But it bothers me how much there is that he’s obviously not telling us. What the hell sorts of secrets could those even be, and why are there _so many_ of them?”

“I don’t know, Blaise,” Draco said tiredly. “And it’s really none of my business. It’s not like I’ll be around for much longer in any case.”

“Right.” Blaise’s eyes flicked to his half-packed trunk. “When are you going back to work?”

“Tomorrow.”

“You don’t sound terribly excited about it.”

Draco shrugged. He couldn’t deny that it had been quite an interesting challenge, but when Granger had asked for a list of the potions Potter still needed and whether there was anything else she needed to know about the rest of the recovery process, he had realized that his time in the Department of Mysteries was at an end. There was no reason for him to stick around. Neither a healer nor a potioneer was needed any longer, and he couldn’t expect them to let him stay here for the fun of it. Besides, he had patients to get back to.

“Right,” said Blaise, and Draco realized he had been silent for far too long. “Good talk.”

“Sorry.” Draco cleared his throat. “I was thinking.”

“Clearly. I haven’t got the time for a chat anyway, I’m due at Robards’ office – probably to get shouted at for not having invented a mind-reading device that the aurors can use, or whatever. In case you’re gone by the time I get back…” He shrugged, and the corner of his mouth quirked up. “Still on for pub night day after tomorrow?”

Draco nodded, and Blaise turned to leave.

“Oh.” He looked back at Draco after two steps. “Potter and Granger were arguing when I passed by her office on my way here. I’m quite certain your name fell at least twice before they got a silencing charm up.”

Draco looked after Blaise for a moment and frowned. Granger and Potter wouldn’t like it if he stuck his nose into their affairs. On the other hand, if it concerned him in any way…

Who was he kidding, he was dead curious, and that was all there was to it.

On the way to the office, a harassed-looking Granger passed him by. She didn’t look at him, clutching a thick folder like a lifeline. Draco tried for a neutral face and a nod, but it was lost on her.

Potter looked less upset than she had when he waved Draco into the room from where he was sitting in his blanket nest, but his face was not a happy one either. He didn’t seem inclined to chat, so Draco figured he might as well cut straight to the chase after he’d closed the door.

“Heard you and Granger were arguing?”

“Yeah,” Potter sighed. “I didn’t mean to stress her out even more when she’s already fighting with Ron, but sometimes – rarely – she really does infuriate me.”

“What did you two argue about?”

“The stuff on my arm.” Potter raised the arm in question. “She still won’t let me see all of it, but from what I’ve gathered by now, it’s stuff that I really _should_ see.”

“You said you trusted her judgement,” Draco reminded him.

“I do, and I know she’s just trying to protect me, but sometimes…well, she goes a bit too far. It comes from a good place, but I got upset because she refuses to admit that she should have told me, and she continues to keep some of these from me. I got her to show me most of them, but not all.” He lowered his arm onto his lap and stared at it. “There is something on here that really disturbs her. I can tell.”

“I see.” Draco frowned. There was no good way of bringing up what Blaise had told him and make it sound casual. “Er, Blaise said he heard a sentence or two in passing. Apparently, my name was mentioned?”

“Well. Yeah.” Harry ran his right index finger over a bit of writing on the inside of his upper forearm. “She let slip that this one is a message for you.”

Draco’s eyebrows rose to what felt like the ceiling. “What does it say? Did she let you see?”

“Yeah, eventually, but it’s in code.” Potter frowned. “The reason I started yelling was because instead of _giving_ you the message, or at least leaving it well enough alone, she’s been trying to decipher it. And she’s refusing to acknowledge that it’s not her place. They’re on _my_ body, in _my_ handwriting, and this one is marked as being for _you.”_

Draco felt a bit betrayed, although it wasn’t like Granger had ever promised him full disclosure. She worked in a place that forced her to keep secrets as a matter of course, he told himself, it would have been her natural instinct to do so in this case as well.

“May I see it?”

Potter reached for something on the floor next to him. The wand he held up a moment later looked vaguely familiar to Draco, but he couldn’t quite place it. It was unassuming, dark wood and little in the way of decoration, and yet his attention was captured by it in a way that felt…strange.

He rubbed away the forming goosebumps on his arms.

Potter traced a circle around the writing he’d been indicating. As he laid the wand aside with a clatter, the blur that had been there resolved itself into a cluster of numbers, and above it the words

_DRACO ONLY:_

“Well,” said Draco, and bit his lip as he looked closely at the numbers.

“Does that tell you anything?”

“It…might.”

“Really?” he asked, looking interested. “Hermione said she wasn’t able to get anywhere close to solving it.”

“That’s because, if it is what I think it is, it’s pretty much unsolvable unless you’re who the message was meant for.”

Harry pointed at a stack of books on the desk that hadn’t been there the day before. “She’s literally searched every available book on arithmancy and magical secret messages. She’s ready to tear her hair out.”

Draco snorted inelegantly. “Joke’s on her then, because it’s based on a Muggle method.”

Harry’s brows shot up. “So…you don’t even _need_ magic to decipher it?”

“No, but if you do it the Muggle way, you’ll need one of those machines they use to calculate things. My friend Millicent – you remember her, right, from our year? She liaises with a Muggle bank for Gringotts, and she told me her contact was overjoyed when they figured out magic wouldn’t be able to crack the codes. She liked the idea, so she learned how it worked and then fashioned some spells that work the same way.”

“Oh,” said Potter, and then, “why?”

Draco stared at him. Then he said, very slowly, “To send secret messages, Potter.”

It wasn’t really fair, because Millie was working on applying it to much more than just messages, but it was how she’d gotten started. The prospect of a new method of keeping secrets was sure to warm any Slytherin’s heart.

“Right, so.” Potter held his arm out. “Do you need to write it down on some parchment? Or can you decode it straight from here?”

“Parchment’s probably safest,” said Draco. “I’m not sure how your skin would take to it, if it actually works.” He went and searched Granger’s desk until he found a small piece that would do and copied the numbers to it with a few taps of his wand.

“Can I see how you decode it?” Potter asked. “You don’t have to show me the message…I mean, you _shouldn’t_ , really, since it says it’s for you only, but I’m interested in how it works.”

“Sure,” Draco said and whispered his passphrase under his breath as he performed the correct wand movement for the spell. It took both of those and his own magical signature to make up the correct key, but they combined easily and flowed through the inked numbers on the parchment.

Draco held his breath, and for a moment, he thought he might have been wrong about the encryption method, but then the inked numbers slowly began to transform.

He stared.

_Help Harry. Stay involved._

_Top the orange juice glasses with lemon water. Make a toast._

_Don’t tell anyone._

“What?” he asked helplessly. “I...what?”

“Is it something bad?” asked Potter.

“Not…as such, no.” Who the fuck had written this? And what in Merlin’s name were they talking about? “Just very confusing.”

Potter snorted. “This entire thing is confusing.”

Draco carefully read the words over one more time and then Vanished the parchment with a flick of his wand. He had no idea what the message was talking about, and he didn’t think anyone else would either, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

So the question was…even if he could figure out what the instructions meant – would he follow them? The fact that the message had been encoded for Draco specifically meant it could only be from one of a handful of people who knew his public key, none of which were likely to have been in contact with Potter.

Draco sighed. This was going to give him a headache.

“Give me a hand, yeah?” Potter asked. He was apparently trying to get up but struggled to find a way to pull himself up safely. As a healer, Draco should probably have insisted on a monitoring spell, but he doubted that Potter would wait for him to cast one, so he moved forward with a mental shrug and pulled Potter to his feet.

“Where do you need to go so urgently?” he asked. “Bathroom?”

“No. I need to speak with Hermione.”

“I could have fetched her for you.”

“No, I need to walk. I haven’t done enough of it over the last few days, and I’m sore from just sitting and lying down.”

Draco was not about to let a weak and shaky Potter walk around the Department of Mysteries by himself, so he tagged along and allowed Potter to use him for balance. He found that he really didn’t mind.

“Do you even know where she went off to?” he asked.

“Well, she’s upset, and when she’s upset she likes to keep busy. Since she’s obviously not in the office, and there’s not a library down here to my knowledge, I’d guess in the Time Room, wherever that is from here.”

“Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Both,” Potter said brightly, which was not at all helpful.

So Draco walked them both back the way he’d come, past the room that had been his lab, to a door he’d never seen any of the Unspeakables go through. At Potter’s prodding, he opened it and peeked in.

Granger was there, making notes on something she was holding, surrounded by a veritable sea of clocks – all different types and different sizes, but all of them creating an extremely annoying chorus of ticking noises. She whirled around as she heard the door opening. When she spotted Draco, she lifted her wand and muffled the ticking noises, which he was grateful for.

“Malfoy,” she said neutrally.

Draco cleared his throat. “Potter wants to speak with you,” he said. “I’ve brought him along.”

Granger’s eyes widened a little, but that was her only outward reaction apart from a tiny nod.

Potter looked around with interest as they made their way into the room. “Not much left here, is there?”

Granger shook her head. “The Ministry finally made the decision to discontinue mucking around with time, after the war,” she said. “The room is technically my responsibility, but as you can see, it’s all been dismantled. It’s why I spend most of my time with Blaise and Anton, in the Thought Room.”

“Yeah,” Potter said somberly. “I think that may be one of the smarter decisions the Ministry has made.”

“What else used to be here?” Draco asked. He found the army of clocks a bit anticlimactic.

“There was a bell jar with bright light, all the way back there.” Potter pointed. “Quite beautiful, actually. It had this…was it a hummingbird, ‘Mione?”

“Yes,” she said. “They’d managed to capture some manner of time current in the jar, and the poor hummingbird went in cycles, like a phoenix, just much shorter and quicker. When they Vanished the jar, the current dissipated. It was before I started to work here, but I was told that the wizard who did it had a beard that grew longer and retracted again for most of a week before it all evened out, and the rest of the Unspeakables that were around at the time developed an astonishing amount of cavities in their teeth.”

“Did they know that would happen?” Draco asked.

Granger rolled her eyes. “No, they didn’t really think at all before trying to just Vanish the entire thing. It didn’t occur to them that you can’t Vanish time like it’s an object.”

“That sounds like the Ministry I know,” said Potter. He frowned and pointed to a different wall. “There was that shelf with the time-turners too, the one that got caught up in an endless loop of breaking and unbreaking.”

“Yes. They decided to just leave that alone after the bell jar incident. It was there until after I started working here.”

“How’d you end up getting rid of it?” Potter asked.

Granger snorted. “ _Very_ carefully. Harry, why are you here? Malfoy or someone else could have come and fetched me.”

“I wanted to walk,” said Potter. “Hermione, I’m going crazy in here.”

She frowned and her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’ve tried to make it as nice as possible –”

“I know that,” said Harry. “But I’m well enough now that I don’t have to stay down here anymore.”

“Oh,” Granger said. “But –”

She fell silent. Draco thought she’d probably realized that Potter wouldn’t be easily swayed, if at all, and he guessed she also didn’t want to keep arguing with him.

“Where would you go, though?” she asked eventually. “You shouldn’t be on your own, not before you’ve had a little more time to recover, and I don’t think we should tell people that you’re back yet. I’d love for you to come stay with Ron and me, but we get too many visitors for that to be a good idea.”

“Yeah, I haven’t figured out that part yet,” Potter sighed. “But I wanted to let you know before I start asking around for ideas.”

Granger opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Draco blurted out, “You could stay with me.”

Both of them turned to stare at him.

“Well,” he said, faltering. That’s what he got for keeping that stupid message’s advice in the back of his mind. “You don’t have to, obviously, but I barely ever have anyone over, and it might not be a bad idea for you to be around a healer for a little while longer, just in case.”

Potter blinked a few times and seemed to be assessing whether Draco was serious. Then he said, “Brilliant.”

~*~

They agreed to have Potter stay at the Ministry for one more night to give Draco time to move the last of his lab equipment and prepare his guest room. He returned to casting cushioning charms on delicate beakers and vials and wrapping up herbs, but he worked slowly. Clearwater had promised to bring him an official “Thank you for not throwing a fit because we borrowed your potions specialist” note to present to St Mungo’s, and even though he didn’t think any of his superiors would make a fuss, it couldn’t hurt to be careful.

Well.

Maybe part of him also wanted to draw out the time until he had to leave for good. Draco wondered if it could still be considered a subconscious act if you kind-of-sort-of knew you were doing it.

He allowed his mind to wander back to all that had happened throughout the past week as he began the familiar task of casting sweeping, scrubbing and disinfection spells. Interestingly, no matter how hard he tried to shove it away, one detail kept insisting on nagging at him.

Potter’s backup wand, and the odd reaction Draco had had to it. 

Clearwater hadn’t shown up by the time he was well and truly finished, so he figured he could think just as well in the empty room as he could at home. So he sat cross-legged on the floor and started the task of regulating his breathing. He hadn’t managed to meditate all week, and it did him good to go through the familiar steps. But after he had emptied his mind as thoroughly as he could, instead of remaining in that state, he allowed his magic to gently draw thoughts of wands from his mind.

It started with a memory of Ollivanders, the day he had purchased his own. He pictured the many rows of haphazardly stacked boxes, some of them new and others ancient, the worn labels on the ends and the dust flying up whenever one of the boxes was taken off the shelf. He remembered the first two wands he had been given to try and the way they hadn’t felt quite right, then the hawthorn wand and the silver fog it had produced once Draco held it, making his own robes and those of his mother sparkle merrily before dissipating.

Classes at Hogwarts, and the wands of his classmates. Beech and walnut and maple and elm, but never that particular dark wood, the one he’d seen in Potter’s hand.

The wands of his teachers, and Draco watching attentively as they performed their spells in front of the students. Snape, clearing the smoke from one of Finnigan’s explosions. Flitwick, demonstrating the levitation charm. McGonagall, transforming animals into water goblets. 

The Death Eaters whom he’d been around so much after Voldemort’s return, the many Unforgivables they’d cast. Bellatrix, Crucio. Yaxley, Imperio. The Dark Lord, Avada Kedavra, again and again.

Draco himself, trying to force those same words out after he’d –

Draco broke back through the surface of his thoughts with a desperate gasp for air. He was on all fours, lungs burning and arms shaking and shock reverberating through him as though it had happened yesterday, that night –

As soon as he could, he got to his feet and stumbled out of the room and past Clearwater, who called his name, sounding puzzled. Left, left again, then on his right the door to Granger’s office. He burst through the door without knocking and stared at a surprised Potter, who’d frozen right in the middle of airing out his bedding.

“Malfoy?” he asked.

“Why the _fuck,”_ Draco whispered, “do you have Dumbledore’s wand?”

Potter slowly lowered the sheet he held.

“Ah,” he said, and then seemed to run out of words entirely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #8 – Shelves filled with messy stacks of wands in boxes
> 
> The encoding & decoding technique Draco refers to in very simple terms in this chapter is public-key cryptography. I originally figured out a lot more detail about how it would work using spells, but since Draco is not Hermione, and since he wouldn't find them necessary in order to get his point across, those details sadly did not make their way into the chapter. So if it all sounds a bit wishy-washy and hand-wavy, sorry! I blame Draco.


	9. December 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've fallen behind a bit more - sorry! I was fighting anxiety attacks for a large part of this chapter, and the rest of my life wasn't exactly being cooperative either. 
> 
> On the bright side, we finally solve one big mystery this chapter!

Draco had regretted few things as much as agreeing to wait a day for the answer to why in Merlin’s name Potter had Dumbledore’s wand.

As though his first day back at St Mungo’s wasn’t difficult enough, his mind wouldn’t bloody cooperate and let the question go until he was finally able to make Potter talk. Instead, Draco went over patient charts while wondering whether he misremembered being told that Dumbledore had been laid to rest with it, and he inspected the potions that he would be taking over mid-brew from Victoria as he contemplated that Potter very much didn’t seem like the grave robbing type. When he wrote down notes on the things that Victoria reported happening in his absence, it occurred to him to wonder why he’d had such a visceral reaction to seeing the wand if he hadn’t even been able to remember at first who had owned it.

“You seem very distracted,” Victoria said towards the end of the day, when she came back from her break and found him staring at the wall instead of counting out lionfish spines. “Is it Wrackspurts?”

Draco huffed an amused breath. “I forgot you know Lovegood.”

“That wasn’t an answer,” said Victoria with a deep frown. She reached into a bulging paper bag she had walked in with and pulled out a chestnut. “Definitely Wrackspurts. I actually only came in because Healer Prussett yelled at me for dumping too much work on you on your first day back and said to make you leave early.”

“Oh.” Draco grimaced. “Sorry. Feel free to tell her that everything is my fault.”

“Like she’d believe it. That woman hates me.”

“I can talk –”

“No,” said Victoria, “just go away. You really do look exhausted. I’ll finish this.”

Draco wasn’t about to put up a fight. He stood, looked at the chestnut in her hand, and raised an eyebrow. “I’m well aware that you know better than to bring food into the lab.”

She looked down at it as though she’d forgotten what she was holding. “Oh, right,” she said and shoved both the chestnut and the paper bag at him. “I don’t even like roasted chestnuts. I only bought them because the guy who was selling them looked so sad, and because it’s freezing outside and I needed something I could use to warm up my hands.”

He reached out reflexively, then asked, “Well, what am I supposed to do with them?”

“I hear they’re widely considered to be edible,” she said. “Now seriously, go away.”

He still had almost an hour before he needed to be back at the Department of Mysteries, but he didn’t have anything better to do, and the alternative was to sit at home and do nothing but think about Potter having Dumbledore’s bloody wand, so he Flooed straight from St Mungo’s to the Ministry anyway, realizing too late that he’d forgotten to change out of his healer robes.

He regretted his timing when he was forced to share a lift with a dour-looking Zacharias Smith.

“I thought you left,” Smith said, in a tone that told Draco clearly that he was disappointed that wasn’t the case.

“Really?” Draco made sure to sound surprised. “ _ Weird. _ Why would someone have lied to you about that?” It was bloody cold in the lift. He tightened his hands around the bag of warm chestnuts.

Smith opened his mouth but was apparently too confused to respond. That state of affairs persisted until the lift stopped on level 9, and Smith pushed past him into the black-tiled corridor that led into the Department of Mysteries.

“Hello, Draco!” said Clearwater, who had apparently forgotten to consult him about switching to given names.

“Hi,” he said. “Er, Penelope.”

She gave him a satisfied nod, as though he had passed some sort of test, and then looked into the bag Smith had handed her. “Wow, Zach. Four whole scones. You shouldn’t have!”

“Hey, I didn’t even have to come to this thing,” Smith said and stalked past them.

Draco looked at Penelope and could tell they were both trying to keep from blurting out that it would have been nicer all around if he hadn’t.

“What’s  _ this, _ exactly?” Draco asked, as they walked into the department proper.

“Not really anything, but since Harry’s leaving, we decided to socialize for a bit until it’s back to our regular work for us tomorrow.”

“Sounds nice,” said Draco. “I can see why Smith would hate it.”

“I asked him if he could go up to the cafeteria and grab a bite to eat for us, but, well.” She lifted the bag. “Most of us will have to stay hungry, I guess.”

“I brought roasted chestnuts,” said Draco, and handed her his paper bag full of them.

“Look at that. Didn’t know we needed food, brought some anyway. You’re like the antithesis of Zacharias Smith.”

Apparently, Draco had just killed two birds with one stone – he’d figured out what to do with a huge amount of roasted chestnuts, and he’d shown up Smith. He mentally patted himself on the back.

“Oh, food!” Marielle smiled as she came toward them. She was carrying a large, clear cube with a pulsating light inside that went from pink-tinted to green-tinted and back on every pulse.

“Don’t get too excited,” said Penelope.

Marielle laughed and snagged Draco’s sleeve.

“Would you do me a favour?” she asked, her gentle voice and hint of an accent making Draco feel lovely and calm. “Get the tray from the kitchenette and bring it to the old Humour Room? I told Hermione I would, but this will take a bit longer than I thought.” She frowned down at the cube, which pulsed more brightly now that she’d taken one hand off it. “It’s already starting to overheat.”

Draco quite badly wanted to know what that cube was, but after a week spent down here, he knew better than to ask.

“Of course,” he said, because it sounded easy enough, and took a left at the next intersection to reach the kitchenette. There was only one tray on the little counter, and it held eight glasses of orange juice.

“Oh fuck,” Draco whispered.

_ Top the orange juice glasses with lemon water. Make a toast. _

He opened the cooling-charmed cupboard and stared at the pitcher of lemon water in it for a very long time. He just couldn’t see the  _ point _ of the entire thing. Why did it matter if he added some water to some juice? It seemed like a completely inconsequential action.

He took out the pitcher and sniffed at the contents. Then he dipped the tip of his index finger in and tasted. Nothing. Just water and a hint of lemon.

What the hell else had he expected?

He tapped his still-wet finger against his lips. If he did this…what could  _ possibly  _ happen?

But maybe a much better question was, would he be okay with ignoring the instructions and spending the rest of his life wondering what following them might have changed?

Fuck it.

Draco gripped the pitcher more tightly and meticulously filled a little bit of water into each of the glasses. He stood and stared for a moment, but nothing happened, and finally, feeling idiotic, he replaced the pitcher in the cupboard and took the tray. More than likely, someone was simply messing with his head. Although if that was the case, how had they known about the orange juice?

Draco was overthinking this to a massive degree.

He made his way past the Space Room to what he’d been told was the room where the Unspeakables had been studying humour in all its forms. The room had long since been decommissioned, but a light and jovial atmosphere remained inside it, so, he supposed, it would make for a good place to hold an impromptu little party.

“Malfoy, thanks,” Granger said and took the tray from him as soon as he stepped foot inside. “I thought you’d still be at work, did something happen?” She studied his lime-green robes as though expecting to find blood splatters.

“Nothing extraordinary,” he said. “It just so happened I was able to leave a little earlier than I’d planned.”

“Lucky you,” she said and hurried away with the tray, which left Draco standing awkwardly next to Ron Weasley.

“Weasley,” he said.

“Malfoy. Er, nice robes?”

Draco tried hard to find a neutral topic of conversation, which was difficult, as they had almost nothing in common. Eventually, he settled for, “How’s the store?”

“Great,” Weasley said with too much enthusiasm for it to be natural. “The new winter products are selling well; we’ve got Christmas crackers that make it snow over the heads of the people who pull them along with the normal stuff you’ll find in crackers. Bit boring, but very popular. And the Instant Illusions are finally selling as well, now that I’ve finished tweaking them, which is good, I was worried I wouldn’t get them all finished in time. And –”

“Ron,” said Potter, sauntering over and rescuing Draco graciously, “you never ended up telling me who you and Hermione were meeting up with last night. Was it Neville?”

Weasley took the lifeline gratefully as well. “Oh, no, Parvati,” he said.

“Patil?”

“D’you know any other Parvatis? Never mind, don’t answer that. Yes, we’ve had a regular dinner for a while with her and her partner.”

“Auror partner or life partner?”

“Auror. I wish it was the other, there’d be a lot less moaning about being single.”

Potter frowned. “She’s the last one left, isn’t she? The last one out of all of us who started Auror training together.”

“Yeah.” The corners of Weasley’s mouth turned down. “Although, mate, you never technically quit, you know. Nor were you fired.”

“That doesn’t mean it counts,” said Potter. “She’s doing well though? Work not getting to her?”

“Nah, she’s as well as you can expect. Bit stressed about her new case though, serial poisonings. Made it even trickier not to mention you, ‘Mione had to keep kicking me under the table.” Weasley turned to Draco. “Mate, that reminds me, do the Aurors even know you’re an expert with poisons? Parvati kept complaining about not being able to find a better consultant.”

“Robards knows, but he doesn’t want his department working with me,” said Draco.

“Why?”

“Why do you think, Weasley? He  _ hates _ me, and he doesn’t want me to have access to the sort of information I’d need to do the job because I was a Death Eater.”

“Well that’s bloody stupid,” said Weasley.

Draco shrugged. “That’s the way it is.”

“Mind if I tell Parvati that you’re the one to talk to?”

“It could get her in trouble,” Draco said.

Weasley shrugged. “She might think it’s worth it. Her choice, really.”

“Then yes, sure,” Draco said. “Make sure she doesn’t just march into St Mungo’s looking all official though, Robards will know in a minute.”

Weasley rolled his eyes, but it was Potter who spoke. “She might have been a bit airheaded back at school, but she’s actually a pretty damn good Auror.”

Draco had been keeping half an eye on the tray of drinks throughout the conversation. Nothing had happened except Smith and Granger had each taken a glass and were sipping on them. They seemed perfectly fine, so Draco decided he might as well see this through.

“Excuse me,” he said, and went to pick up a glass of his own. He grimaced and then got over himself and said loudly, “I’d like to make a toast!”

Conversations ceased. Potter and Weasley looked confused, and so did Blaise, but Marielle seemed to like the idea if her beaming smile was anything to go by.

“Right,” said Granger, despite the look of surprise she still wore. “Grab a drink, everyone!”

_ Oh. _ This bit with the toast made a tiny bit more sense now that Draco saw everyone reaching for a glass and holding it expectantly. He felt all eyes uncomfortably on him.

“Right,” he said and tried to find words that weren’t idiotic. “I…just wanted to acknowledge Potter’s determination and perseverance in a situation that would have gotten the better of the rest of us, and to say that it’s actually quite nice to have him back here. So, to Potter!”

“And to Malfoy, for all of his help!” Granger called out.

Everyone raised their glass, shouted, “To Potter! And Malfoy!” and drank.

Nothing happened. Draco gave up on ever figuring out what the hell this had been supposed to accomplish.

Potter came up to him soon after spending several minutes hugging people and declared himself ready to leave. They walked together to Granger’s office, where Potter shoved two changes of clothes, a cloak and his – Dumbledore’s – wand into a bag. It had to be upsetting, Draco realized, to have next to no possessions any longer because they’d all been distributed and sold, or else were displayed in places like the St Mungo’s reception area. 

“Want me to glamour you?” he asked.

“Sure.” Potter looked expectant and didn’t even flinch when he had Draco’s wand pointed right in his face. Draco kept it quite simple, lightening the hair, hiding the scar, making slight changes to the contours of the face and finally turning green eyes into blue. He found himself wishing he didn’t have to do it, even if only temporarily. He’d gotten quite used to Potter’s face over the past week.

They attracted no attention on their way out of the Ministry. Once they had Flooed to the flat, Draco gave Potter half an hour to get settled in the guest room before he knocked on the open door and stood there with crossed arms and an expectantly raised brow.

“Right,” said Potter and sighed. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

“The living room’s quite comfortable,” Draco said in response. He closed the Floo and stoked the fire and made them both some hot tea to combat the lingering chill. It was pitch black outside apart from the coloured lights in the windows across the street. He sat on the sofa across from Potter and said, “So.”

“So,” Potter repeated. “Right. No easy way of saying this.” He withdrew the wand from his pocket and laid it on the table between them. “This is the Elder Wand.”

The words took a moment to make any sense at all. “Elder Wand,” Draco repeated once they started to. “As in…one of the Hallows?”

“That’s the one.”

“Potter. I hate to break this to you, but that’s a bedtime story. Whoever told you there was more to it –”

“Quit that, Malfoy,” said Potter. “Do you really think Dumbledore would have been taken in by a bedtime story?”

“Well,” Draco said and then wasn’t sure how to continue. It didn’t seem likely, no, but neither did it seem likely that Potter had just casually plonked one of the Deathly Hallows on Draco’s coffee table.

“Dumbledore won it when he defeated Grindelwald,” Potter explained.

“Ah.” Draco let his eyes rest on the unassuming dark wood. Something occurred to him. “Wait, is this how you came out of the Veil?”

“Mostly no,” said Potter. “I mean, it had a bit to do with it, but it wasn’t the whole reason.”

“What  _ was _ the whole reason?”

Potter looked awkward.

_ “What?” _

“Er, that would be something to do with the other Hallows.”

“Potter, seriously, don’t fucking expect me to believe that –”

“I’m not _ expecting _ anything, Malfoy, you asked a question and I’m answering it. Do you need to take me a shot of bloody Veritaserum?”

“Well, no, because I’m sure you may actually be delusional enough to believe you’ve seen or held the Hallows, but that doesn’t make it true.”

“If they hadn’t been the actual Hallows, I wouldn’t have been able to come out of the Veil.”

Draco took a deep breath. He couldn’t believe he was seriously entertaining the idea that Potter might be right, but  _ something _ extraordinary had happened to get Potter from the cairn to the Department of Mysteries, and he might as well let Potter tell his tale before he attempted to poke holes in the entire thing.

“Right,” he said. “So, start with why you even had the wand in the first place. I thought it had been laid to rest with Dumbledore? I can’t really picture you taking it from his tomb. And why did you take it on your Auror mission?”

“I didn’t take it from the tomb, no. That was Voldemort.”

Draco froze.

“It’s…it’s why he killed Snape, see. He wanted the power of the Elder Wand, so he tracked it down, and when that wasn’t enough, he figured he had to kill the current owner.”

The thought of Voldemort having a wand that powerful sent cold shivers down Draco’s back. And then there was Severus’ death, which Draco had always wondered about. He’d never been given a satisfying answer as to how or why it had happened.

“How were you able to beat him?” he whispered. “If the Dark Lord actually owned the Elder Wand –”

“Yeah, but he didn’t, because Snape never actually owned the wand either.”

Draco frowned. “Why not? Who won the wand from Dumbledore, then? You? How –”

Potter looked awkward. “Er, no, that would be you.”

“Excuse me?” Draco spluttered, because that was just absurd.

“The wand’s loyalty is passed on through defeat, but it doesn’t have to be killing. Disarming counts.”

“But…that’s ridiculous, I would have known!”

“How?” Potter asked with raised brows.

Draco opened his mouth and then, once again, didn’t know what to say. How  _ would _ he have known? It wasn’t like there was physical proof that any wand’s loyalty…wait, was he seriously considering this insane theory?

“I won it from you at Malfoy Manor,” Potter said. “Apparently, simply ripping a wand out of someone’s hand counts too, and apparently, it doesn’t even have to be the Elder Wand. I bested you, and that’s all it cared about.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Draco repeated.

“If it was, I’d be dead, because there was nothing that would have saved me from the Killing Curse the third time he hit me with it. The wand simply wouldn’t work against me, because I owned it.”

Draco shook his head, but if he tried to figure this out, they’d never get anywhere with the tale. “Fine,” he said therefore. “Let’s assume I believed that. Why take the wand along on the mission? You said you didn’t normally carry a backup wand at all.”

“No, I never did,” Potter agreed. “You remember that Sue and I were investigating suicides? When we were interviewing the friends of the two students who killed themselves, they said that they’d been hearing those students talk to people who weren’t there, and that they were wearing a ring they hadn’t before. It sounded eerily familiar.”

“Why?”

“Resurrection Stone,” said Potter.

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“It was fitted into a ring a long time ago. Voldemort’s family had it for generations, and then Voldemort himself, but he didn’t know what it was, just that it was a family heirloom. He put a curse on it for a different reason and hid it. Dumbledore found it. That was the curse that made his hand wither, by the way, but I’m not about to dive into that can of worms.” Potter looked uncomfortable.

“Fine,” Draco sighed, because apparently he was just going to have to go with this. “How’d the students end up with it?”

“Dumbledore passed it to me, I think to give me comfort as I walked to meet Voldemort in the forest, during the battle. I knew I would have to die – you remember me telling you about that, yes?”

“Yes, of course, it’s not exactly the sort of thing I’m likely to forget!”

“You’d be surprised about the sorts of things people forget,” said Potter. “Anyway, I was able to see my parents, and Sirius, and Remus, and that made walking to my death a bit easier. I dropped it in the forest – I intended for it to be lost forever, actually, but apparently, Hogwarts’ new gamekeeper found it and used it to manipulate the students into killing themselves. So that’s what we were tracking down, but I couldn’t tell Sue about it because I didn’t exactly want it to become public knowledge that the ring existed, or that I owned the Elder Wand. I thought maybe having the other two Hallows would give me an advantage to finding the stone.”

“Fucking hell.” Draco scrubbed his palms across his face. Then he froze. “Did you just say the other  _ two _ Hallows?”

“Invisibility Cloak,” said Potter. “I inherited that one from my father.”

Draco let his hands sink very, very slowly. “Potter. Are you aware of what this means?”

“That I was able to escape from a cairn?”

“You don’t know what the legend says about the one who reunites the Deathly Hallows?”

“Oh, that bollocks with being Master of Death?” Potter waved him off.

“What!? You can’t just tell me all about the Hallows and expect me to believe every word and then say that!”

“Well, it’s true. Although.” Potter looked thoughtful. “Maybe the whole coming out of the Veil bit is what that refers to?”

“You’re...actually the Master of Death. Fucking hell.”

“Were. And I said maybe.”

“But –”

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

Draco felt like he was being admonished by his mother for interrupting too much during his bedtime story. He motioned for Potter to keep going.

“Anyway, I had the wand, and I had the cloak stuffed into my pocket, and then I grabbed the ring just before I fell into the cairn.”

“You were still stuck though, despite having them,” Draco said.

“Well, yes. But I was able to put on the ring, so at least I had company. Spending two years with my parents was nice.” Potter looked wistful. “I had to say goodbye eventually, and it was hard, but they wanted me to live, and I promised them I would.”

“Why didn’t you keep the ring?”

“That’s to do with how I got out of there. I wasn’t actually the one who figured out to do that, though. Remus and Sirius and my parents came up with the plan.”

Draco was long past the point of having his jaw drop because Potter told him that four dead people had organized his escape. He just nodded.

“So, this is about to get a bit complicated,” Potter said.

“Like it wasn’t already?”

“Not really.” Potter frowned because apparently, he thought owning all the Hallows was as straightforward as it got. “I knew I couldn’t get out of the cairn because there was a threshold all around me that I wasn’t able to cross. Sirius proposed that I might be able to get around that by passing through the Realm of the Dead instead, sort of…tunnel under the fence, so to speak. His words, by the way. He’s a dog animagus, so, you know, for him it was just another escape from the yard.”

“Right,” Draco said weakly.  _ Through the Realm of the Dead? _

“Obviously there were a few problems with that idea.”

“No kidding.”

“Namely, how would I get there, how would I get back  _ out _ , how would I manage not to  _ die  _ since that’s what normally happens if you go there – that’s why it kills you to fall through the Veil – and how would I even figure out where to go? It’s not even a physical place in that sense, just more of a…a void.”

“There’s also the fact that it’s a batshit insane plan,” Draco pointed out.

“Well, yes, of course it is, but the alternative was dying anyway, so I didn’t exactly have much to lose.”

“I suppose,” Draco said sceptically.

“That’s about how the rest of us reacted when Sirius first proposed it, by the way, but in the end, the others agreed it was better than not trying anything at all, so they helped figure it all out. Getting back out of the Realm of the Dead was the easiest part because we knew about the Veil. If you’re dead, you can’t pass through it back into the world of the living, but obviously, I wasn’t, so we figured I would be able to.”

“Which was right.”

“Yes. The way I got in…” Potter took a very deep breath. “I destroyed the Resurrection Stone. Its magic sought to be reunited with its creator, and since the cairn was closer to the Realm of the Dead than most other places, it was able to create a temporary rift in the barrier between them to get there. I simply went along with it.”

“Merlin fuck,” Draco said tonelessly because it was just now dawning on him that Potter had  _ actually done this _ .

Potter gave him a wry smile. “So, next problem, how would I be able to find my way to the veil?”

“And?”

“My mother came up with that one. Did you know there’s a spell to pull you toward a loved one?”

“Yes. My mother used it to find me when I was little and lost somewhere in the manor. I’m not surprised yours knew it too, I think it’s considered a rather essential parenting tool. How did that pull you to the  _ Veil _ though?”

“Hermione,” Potter said simply. “I knew she worked here.”

Draco’s eyes went wide.  _ “Oh.” _

Potter grinned at him. Draco had the uncomfortable feeling that the git was starting to enjoy his continued shock and awe. However…

“There is no way that spell would have worked from one realm to the other though,” he said. “Else we’d be able to do all sorts of weird shit with magic, communicate telepathically with the dead, things like that.”

“True, magic doesn’t work over there,” Potter agreed. “Not when you use an ordinary wand to cast it.”

_ “Oh,” _ Draco breathed again.

Potter’s grin went wider.

“So,” he sighed, “don’t leave me hanging. How the fuck did you manage not to die?”

“Remember how the youngest of the three brothers managed to keep from dying for so long?”

“Yes, he used the Cloak to…” Draco faltered when the realization hit him. “To hide from Death.  _ Merlin fuck, _ Potter.”

“Yeah, so.” Potter shrugged like it was no big feat. “Now you know.”

Yes, now Draco knew.

“So, all that’s left for me to do is figure out how that caused all of this,” Potter indicated his left arm, “and how I was poisoned.”

“Well, if it’s only that,” Draco said drily. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #9 – Chestnuts roasting over a fire


	10. December 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been trying to keep up on replying to comments, but it's been almost impossible to do that AND write AND prepare for Christmas AND do my day job. Please know that I do read them, and every single one has been so lovely and inspirational, and I'm very happy that you're all invested in the story. Thanks so very much!!
> 
> Etalice is a rock star and a wonderful human being.

Draco had barely put his healer’s robes on when Victoria told him that there was someone waiting for him by the lab.

“This was supposed to be my last day, Draco,” she said. “Has something else come up? Are you going to need me here for longer? I want to return to my life of leisure, damn it.”

“You are a saint, Victoria, and your sacrifice shall not be forgotten. They should name the next hospital after you. But no,” he waved her off, “I won’t need you after today.”

The woman who waited for him was pale, red-haired, and completely unfamiliar until he’d invited her into the lab for privacy, like she’d requested. By the time he’d closed the door and turned toward her, she had taken the glamour off.

“Patil,” he said, surprised. “I wasn’t expecting you this soon, if at all.”

“Parvati, please,” she said. “I know. Sorry about ambushing you, but I’m under a lot of pressure. The latest victim is one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and Robards is panicking.”

She did look stressed. There were bags under her eyes, and her hair was surprisingly messy. But Draco hadn’t seen her since Hogwarts, so he wasn’t sure if she just always wore it like that these days, in a hasty, utilitarian ponytail.

Draco sat down and invited her to do the same with a simple gesture. “What do you need?” he asked.

“I brought some blood from all three victims. Could you have a look and confirm it’s the same poison that killed all three? And if you can figure out how it might have entered their bodies, that wouldn’t go amiss either.”

“Sure,” he said. “The first one should be simple enough, I’ll let you know about the second.”

He had done a blood analysis so many times he could have done it in his sleep. But things wouldn’t be that simple, he realized once he had it under the microscope.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, _fuck.”_

He would have to tell Victoria he would still need her after all.

~*~

“The poison that was used in Parvati’s case is the same one that nearly killed you,” he reported as soon as he’d stepped out of the Floo.

Potter, who was sitting by himself on the sofa, looked up at that. He was very pale and his eyes had a haunted look to them.

“What’s wrong?” Draco asked.

Potter only shook his head.

“Alright,” Draco said. “Tea?”

“Please,” Potter rasped.

Potter followed him into the kitchen when Draco started on the tea. “You’re late,” he said.

“Well, yes. I had to get started on the antidote.” Draco was a bit concerned that Potter wasn’t showing more of a reaction to the news that the same poison had shown up elsewhere. It didn’t seem right.

“I thought the people who were poisoned were already dead?”

“Well, yes, but we’ll need it if it keeps happening. I also need to try and understand this stuff better, because it’s so different from other poisons that figuring out the mechanism may point us to its creator.”

“Ah,” Potter said awkwardly and stared into space.

“You seem preoccupied.”

“No, I…well, yes. Sorry, I don’t mean to dismiss what you’re telling me, but there’s just so much on my mind right now. I talked to Hermione.”

“About?”

“The writing on my arm.”

“Did she finally let you see it?”

Potter nodded.

“And?”

For a long time, Potter said nothing, opening his mouth repeatedly and closing it again, moistening his lips. Draco tried not to be too obviously impatient. Eventually, Potter managed to speak.

“I…I appear to be stuck in a time loop.”

Draco went to fetch the Firewhisky.

~*~

“How exactly does Granger claim to know this?” Draco asked once they were seated, both clutching mugs that contained more Firewhisky than tea.

Potter snorted. “Because it says so.” He reached for his wand and revealed the very small bit of writing in the crook of his elbow.

 _TIME LOOP,_ it stated bluntly, followed by what looked like tally marks. Draco ran a finger across them. Seventeen.

“Hermione thinks that means I’m in the seventeenth iteration,” said Harry.

“Fucking… _how?_ _Why?”_

Potter shrugged. “You know as much as I do. I seem to lose my bloody memory whenever it starts over.”

“When you came out of the Veil,” Draco realized. “That was when it started.”

Potter nodded. “The first time must have been right after the cairn, and then, for some reason neither of us can even guess at, I went back in time to that exact point. Why then, we don’t know. We don’t know anything.”

Draco brushed his fingers once more across the words _TIME LOOP._

“The writing stays,” he realized.

“Yeah, apparently. And, as you may have guessed, we have no idea why.”

Draco leaned back and took a gulp of Firewhisky with tea. “Potter, why the fuck do these things always happen to you?”

“Dunno. I’d really quite like a boring life.”

It was the most upset Draco had seen him since he had woken up after the detox. Before he could stop himself, he sat closer to Potter and laid a hand on his back.

“I’ll help if I can,” he said quietly.

Potter nodded, staring straight ahead. Then he turned abruptly and pressed his forehead to Draco’s shoulder.

“I don’t _want_ this,” he repeated, sounding desperate.

“I don’t doubt it.” Draco awkwardly stroked Potter’s back. “But you’ve got Granger and Weasley and even me. We can figure this out.”

Potter cleared his throat. “Thanks,” he croaked.

Draco turned his body a little and shifted, and suddenly Potter was in his arms, shaking like mad.

“I don’t want this,” he repeated yet again, talking into the crook of Draco’s neck, and for some reason, Draco didn’t mind it one bit, which, oddly enough, intrigued him almost as much as the apparent time loop.

~*~

Because Potter had requested it, Draco had Flooed Granger and Weasley and invited them over. They’d brought a bottle of wine, apparently thinking along the same lines as Draco, that alcohol was really the only appropriate response.

“I think you’re working toward some kind of goal,” Granger said. “And you get a little closer each time, and then leave yourself another hint for the next loop.”

“And when I get to that goal, the loop will break?” Potter asked hopefully.

“That’s my theory, anyway.”

“Why’s it all so cryptic though?” Weasley asked. “Why can’t you just be straightforward with yourself?”

“We don’t know,” Potter and Granger said at the same time.

“Merlin fuck,” said Draco, because it seemed appropriate, and because he hadn’t contributed much of anything lately. “You get poisoned at the end of each loop, right? Just before you go back.”

“Maybe that’s what I’ve got to figure out,” said Potter. “How to keep from getting poisoned. Or maybe who’s poisoning me.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” said Granger. “I mean, as much as this entire thing _can_ make sense.”

“No, it can’t,” Potter said, burying his head in his hands. “You know what makes sense about this? Absolutely fuck all.”

“Oh, Harry.” Granger stood and hurried to his side so she could put her arms around him and hug him tightly. “We can figure this out. I promise we can.”

“Well,” Potter said, muffled, “maybe you say that every time.”

Granger’s face fell. Apparently, that hadn’t occurred to her.

Draco sighed and scrubbed his palms over his face. “As I told Potter earlier, Parvati came to me this morning, and we figured out that the poison used in the case she’s working is the same one Potter came out of the Veil with. If we’re trying to figure out who poisoned him, we need to work with her.”

“That…actually makes sense,” said Weasley, looking as though agreeing with Draco was physically uncomfortable.

“Why do you call me ‘Potter’ but she’s ‘Parvati’?” Potter asked. 

“Because she offered me first names,” said Draco.

“Well, you should call me Harry. I live with you, it’s a bit weird we’re still using last names, isn’t it?”

Draco frowned. “I suppose. That’s weird though, you’ve always been Potter.”

“And you’ve always been Malfoy, and we should change that. What’s your point?”

“That it’s _weird.”_

Potter rolled his eyes.

“The wine is empty,” Weasley said sadly.

“Firewhisky is in the kitchen,” said Draco. “On the counter.”

“Brilliant!”

“Maybe,” said Draco, “we switch to first names every time you go through the loop.”

“So…are you saying we shouldn’t even bother?”

“Maybe,” said Draco, and stared out of the window, contemplating it. The idea really was weird, but so was the thought that it had already happened seventeen times.

Potter sighed repeatedly. Draco couldn’t help but wonder if an upside-down Instant Illusion Christmas tree might lighten the atmosphere or at least give Potter something less upsetting to think about.

Weasley came back from the kitchen with the entire bottle of Firewhisky and a card. “So,” he said, “I couldn’t help but go through your mail…er, I mean, I knocked the stack over, I wasn’t actually looking as such…anyway…”

“Ron,” said Granger disapprovingly.

“But look, ‘Mione,” Weasley held up the card. On the front of it were three hand-drawn Christmas ornaments, purple and red and yellow, and beneath that the words I LIKE YOUR BALLS.

 _“Ron,”_ Granger repeated, even more disapprovingly.

“But I want to know who sends Malfoy cards like this!”

“What, you didn’t look inside for the signature?” Draco asked drily.

“Of course not!” Weasley sounded positively scandalized.

Draco was about to take the card back and let it go, but then he glanced Potter’s way and realized that one corner of his mouth was quirking up, and, hell, Potter could use a little cheering up.

“Why don’t you guess,” he said therefore. “Was it…A, an ex, or B, a one night stand, or C, my mother?”

Weasley’s eyes went wide. “Your _mother?”_

“No, wrong,” said Draco.

“That wasn’t my guess!”

“Yes it was. You were wrong, so now you’ll never know.”

Potter was close to a grin now. Draco gave himself a mental pat on the back. Then he wondered why he cared so much.

 _“Ron,”_ Granger said yet again, and Draco realized that Weasley had opened the card.

“Oh,” he said, and his face fell. “’Thought of you, love, Pansy’. Well, that’s a bit boring. You two are still together?”

“No, you idiot, it’s a joke,” said Draco. “And we were never together in the first place, because she’s been pining after a certain Ravenclaw for a good ten years, and I’m gay as a parade.”

Potter sat up straighter, which Draco took to mean he was feeling a bit better. He stood and plucked the card out of Weasley’s hands. “Enough of that,” he said. “Now, should we start figuring out how to investigate those poisonings, or just drink until we forget all about the bloody time loop.”

“I vote for drinking,” said Potter, and Weasley handed over the Firewhisky.

“Might as well,” sighed Granger, much to Draco’s surprise. But he had enough hangover potion for all four of them, and he knew that they’d have a lot more to worry about very, very soon, so he wasn’t about to protest. Besides, with all of the very strange revelations lately, it seemed a perfectly rational response.

“There’s more wine in the bottom cabinet by the fridge,” he said. “Cheers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #10 – A Christmas card with ornaments and printed text “I Like Your Balls”


	11. December 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice is the bestest beta reader that ever beta read. The very bestest, I tell you!

“I appreciate that you all want to help, but I can’t just let you mess around with an active investigation,” said Parvati.

“We wouldn’t be messing around,” Granger said, as though that was completely ludicrous. “We would simply be…consultants. Liaisons. You can have those.”

“Or you could just accidentally give us the file,” Weasley proposed.

 _Smooth,_ Draco thought.

“Absolutely not,” said Parvati, but she was facing Weasley when she said it, so Draco dared hope that Granger’s suggestion wasn’t included in her emphatic refusal.

He cleared his throat. “I do actually have a legitimate reason to question witnesses,” he said. “I need to know timeframes, how _long_ the poison takes until it works, I need to figure out what possibilities and circumstances would have allowed the poison to be transferred. A lot of it is intuitive because it’s based upon a poison with an extremely complex makeup. Any questioning needs to be dynamic so I can get all the information I need, which means I have to be there.”

Parvati pursed her lips and gave Draco a very long look.

“Fine,” she said. “But that doesn’t include Hermione and Ron.”

“They are my assistants,” Draco said promptly in his most imperious Malfoy voice.

The corner of Parvati’s mouth quirked upwards ever so slightly. “That may just be the single most unlikely thing I’ve heard this year.”

Draco wished he could challenge that statement by recommending she have a talk with Potter. But Potter was of course still a secret kept by a select few, and he was currently hidden in Weasley and Granger’s bedroom, probably unable to sit still as he waited for Parvati to leave.

“Well, he could have one assistant, right?” Granger bargained. “To take notes? We’d use a glamour and everything.”

Parvati said, “I’m going to regret this, I just know it.”

“That’s a yes?” Draco asked.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll get you a consultant badge.”

~*~

“I’d really like to talk to her,” said an obviously sad Potter once Parvati had left and Draco had gone to the bedroom to let him know. “And Susan too. And, well, a lot more people, after the rest of the Weasleys, of course.” He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. 

“You will,” Draco said and sat down next to him on the bed. “Once we’ve figured this out.”

“Right.” Potter laid aside the parchment he’d been holding, which had a lot of text and lines on it and was folded in a complicated way. He pulled up the sleeve of his jumper and allowed the words on his skin to unscramble and sharpen, apparently able to reveal them wandlessly now. 

Draco had never had the opportunity to examine them all at his leisure. He gently grasped Potter’s wrist and, when Potter didn’t protest, drew it close.

 _CHECK IN PLANT_ advised one of the clues. Another said _TRIGGER_ and then something that started with a V.

“Your handwriting is shit,” Draco told him.

Potter chuckled. “That’s not exactly newsworthy.”

There was a small one that was circled, and when Draco squinted at it, he managed to make out _PROTECT SUSAN_

“Has anyone been making sure to do that?” he asked, indicating it.

“Hermione said she did as much as she could without giving away the why of it. Sue didn’t want to stay home from work, but Neville walks her there and back home. He sleeps over when he can, too. I don’t think she minds.” Potter smirked. “Hermione told her to be careful with food and drink, just in case. And she’s still got Auror instincts, you know, so I hope she’ll be fine.”

“Good,” Draco said softly. “I hope that will be enough.” He barely knew Susan Bones outside of school, but she did not deserve to get mixed up in this.

“Me too,” Potter said.

Draco carefully turned the arm a bit and realized that some of the messages were crossed out. Perhaps those were hints that had turned out to be unhelpful? Then there was a message to Granger that was also encoded.

“Has she been able to read this?” he asked.

Potter shook his head. “No, she hasn’t had any luck. Do you think it’s the same sort of encryption that yours had?”

“Possibly, but there’s no way to be sure.”

 _HOW DID THEY FEEL? a_ sked yet another note. Draco brushed his fingers over it, and Potter shivered.

“Wonder if that refers to the victims,” Draco thought out loud.

“No idea, but it can’t hurt to ask when we go interview the witnesses.”

_“We?”_

“I am absolutely coming with you,” said Potter, “because it’s _my_ time loop and _my_ clues, and I’m not going to hide in someone’s bedroom the entire time you and Ron and Hermione run around trying to figure it out. I’ll wear a glamour, obviously. But I’m going.”

“Fine,” Draco said, “but you’ll have to work on convincing them, I’m not doing that.”

“I will.”

Draco couldn’t resist tracing the letters with his finger. “Have you looked into what kind of ink this is?” he changed topics.

“Hermione says Muggle marker," said Potter. He slid a bit closer. His elbow was probably starting to hurt from the way Draco was holding his arm. “She cast a preservation charm so I could take showers without washing it off by accident.”

Draco nodded and finally let go of Potter’s arm. He wasn’t sure what to do with his hands after that, which was a bit odd and not a problem he normally had. Eventually he settled for leaning back a bit and propping himself up on his arms, but when he started to do that, his hand landed right on the folded parchment and wrinkled it a bit.

“Hey!” Potter sounded annoyed.

“Sorry, sorry.” He took the parchment and tried to smooth it out, noticing that there were moving dots on it with…names on them?

“What is this thing?” he asked with a frown. “Why does it…does that say ‘McGonagall’?”

“Oh, yeah.” Potter had moved closer again without Draco noticing. “That’s the headmistress’ office. She’s probably sitting at her desk.”

“Is that… _now?_ Is she doing that _now?”_

“Yes,” Potter said cheerfully. “This is why I was almost never caught out of bed back when we were in school.” He moved his splayed hand over the parchment. “My dad and his friends made this, actually. Back in the cairn, they told me some of the magical theory involved. It’s quite interesting, I’ll have to keep in mind for when I need something to bribe Hermione with.”

“Does it show all of Hogwarts?” Draco asked, fascinated.

“Mostly. The Room of Requirement isn’t on there.” Potter frowned. “I don’t even know if that still exists. I never bothered to find out.”

“After the Fiendfyre, you mean.” Draco was proud that after all this time, he could actually talk about the incident without shivering or staring into space as he remembered Crabbe. That didn’t mean he _wanted_ to think back.

“Yes,” said Potter. He lifted his head to look at Draco, who felt warm breath brush his jaw and realized suddenly just how close Potter was.

“Harry?”

Draco couldn’t suppress a small flinch, and Potter cleared his throat and went to the door. “Yes, Hermione?” he asked.

“Draco has you all caught up?”

_Draco?_

“Draco?” Potter asked, sounding confused.

“Well, you made a very good point yesterday about it being silly to still use last names.”

“I’m going to keep calling you Granger,” Draco announced, just in case anyone had been wondering.

“That’s fine,” she said and grinned at him. “Draco.”

“Weird,” he complained.

She laughed and then her gaze landed on the folded parchment. “You found the map,” she said. “Good. I was going to tell you we still had it, we never could decide what to do with it.”

“Give it to a worthy troublemaker at Hogwarts, of course.”

She rolled her eyes. “Of course. We still have the photo album as well, the one of your parents. I realize it might feel different for you to look at it now that you’ve spent so much time with them –”

“No, it’s great,” Potter interrupted her. “It’s great. I’m glad you kept it. It’s weird, really – I mourned not having known them, before. Now…now I’m starting to mourn all over again, but this time for the people they were, which is weird, because they’ve been dead for so long –”

“That’s not weird at all,” said Draco. “You got to know them and spend time with them, and now you won’t be able to again. It’s completely understandable.”

“Yes,” said Granger. “I agree with Draco.”

 _“Weird,”_ Draco complained again, but neither of them paid him any mind.

~*~

“So,” said Victoria, leaning against the door jamb and squinting at Draco, who had decided to spend the latter half of his day working on the antidote despite it being his day off. His hours would be irregular from now on anyway, since he was once again being temporarily employed by the Ministry and had to be available for witness interviews and the like.

“So?” he asked.

“We’re down to two patients in the ward. All-time low, apparently.”

“Oh,” he said. Good.”

“Both of them are on the road to recovery, no fresh brews necessary.”

“Even better.”

“So.”

“So _what,_ Victoria?”

“So, show me what you’re working on and let me help, you fopdoodle,” she said. “It’s your fault that I’m here, therefore it’s your fault that I’m sitting around being bored. I know whatever you’re doing is important and at least a little bit time-sensitive, and two heads are better than one.”

Draco straightened from his uncomfortable hunched-over position and studied her. During the eight months that their apprenticeships with the same Potions Master had overlapped, he had gotten to know her fairly well. She was thorough and not prone to mistakes, and she had a knack for remembering techniques and theories that were either obscure or out of fashion, which might come in handy for something like this, where an unconventional approach was required.

On top of that, she had absolutely no poker face, so he could be sure her offer wasn’t some kind of underhanded way to sabotage him, which was good to know, just in case.

“Alright,” he said and pushed his notes to the side so she could come and look at them. She did so, tucking her chin-length black hair behind her ear as a look of concentration appeared on her face.

“Alright, so the poison is metamorphic,” she said after a few minutes. “Are you trying to find an antidote or figure out the mechanism?”

“Both, ideally,” said Draco. “Antidote takes precedence, but I believe the more we understand about the poison, the more effective an antidote we can create.”

“Makes sense,” she said. “How does the poison enter the body?”

“Don’t know,” Draco sighed. “Not a contact poison, that’s all I know.”

“Has it killed anyone?”

“Yes. Three people. I was able to cure it in one, and that was a pain in the arse I was only able to pull off because there was a True Stasis spell involved.”

“Has anyone done an autopsy to look where the poison damage is most concentrated? Even if it doesn’t change structure until it finds the correct cells, it wouldn’t have had enough time to distribute evenly in the blood, so there should be an accumulation somewhere downstream from the entry point, whether that’s an organ or an injury.”

“I don’t believe so,” said Draco. “Even if they had, it’s unlikely they would have known what to look for. I’ll ask Parvati if there is a way for me to have a look.” He made a face. Autopsies were not something he was used to doing, and he found even the thought disturbing. But he was a professional, and so he would act like a professional, even if a small part of him wanted to run screaming like he was ten.

“Parvati? So this is for the Aurors?” Victoria asked.

“Yes, but it’s only half-official, so don’t go shouting it from the rooftops.”

“What does half-official mean, exactly?”

“It means Parvati has asked me to be a consultant without clearing it with Robards because he’d say no.”

“Never liked that guy anyway,” she said. “If it helps, you both can feel free to tell him I’m the one helping her out if he asks. I mean,” she tapped Draco’s notes with her index finger, “it’s not even technically a lie at this point, is it?”

“Suppose not,” said Draco. “Alright, back to work. I’m trying to find some way to get the poison particles to reveal how many and which magical triggers were placed on it. I’ve been thinking some kind of magi-chemical indicator might work, but I’m having trouble coming up with a substance that is reactive enough. Any ideas?”

“Have you tried catnip?” she asked, and Draco immediately started wondering if Victoria had spent too much time with Luna Lovegood lately. He would have to keep a very, _very_ open mind.

This was going to be interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #11 – The Marauder’s Map


	12. December 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice saved my soul from the grammar devil and his comma minions.

Clara Goldhorn’s eyes were red-rimmed, and Draco didn’t blame her. From what Parvati had told him about the investigation, the woman had been through quite the ordeal. She had found her boss dead in her office, been accused of the deed, been fired, and then been accused of having had an affair with her boss when she came back to the Ministry to collect her things.

“It was horrible,” she said, sitting slumped in her kitchen chair. “He shouted it, right in the atrium. Everyone heard. It’s not even true!”

“What was the name of the Auror who did that, ma’am?” Draco asked. It wasn’t why he was here, but he was not above a bit of petty revenge on other people’s behalf, and he knew without even looking that Potter was outraged over the treatment as well. Besides, Clara had kindly served them tea and scones with clotted cream - that was not the sort of woman anyone should be able to get away with shouting at for no good reason.

“Archibald Grouse,” she said. “But I’ve already filed a complaint. They said he did nothing wrong.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” said Potter. Even though his face was not his own at the moment, there was no mistaking the earnest look. “We’re going to take care of it.”

“Hank is right,” Draco agreed. He was using every opportunity to say the name he’d chosen for Potter’s disguise, mostly because it annoyed Potter to such a delightful degree. “This sort of behaviour is outrageous.”

Clara gave them a watery smile. “Thanks. But you didn’t come just to hear me complaining, did you? What can I do for you?”

“Just a few follow-up questions, if you don’t mind.”

“That’s quite alright,” she said. “I want Lena’s killer caught so badly. She didn’t deserve what happened to her, not one bit. They say it’s a poison – is that true? How could that have happened?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” Draco looked down at the bits of information Parvati had given them. “Secretary Fletcher was alone in the room when she died, is that correct?”

“Yes, it is,” Clara confirmed. “She’d just finished a work meeting, three gentlemen from Games and Sports. She talked to me for a moment, and then she went back into her office. I checked on her…maybe fifteen minutes later? And that’s when I found her lying on the floor.”

“Did she mention what she was going to work on?” Potter asked. He was only supposed to sit and take notes while Draco asked the questions, but Draco probably shouldn’t have expected that to actually happen.

“Nothing specific, no. She said she was only going to wrap up whatever she’d been working on before the meeting, and then go home.”

“What time was that?” Draco asked.

“One-thirty, maybe?”

“Was she in the habit of leaving so early?”

“Oh, no, not at all! She thought she was coming down with the flu, so she wanted to go home and take a healthy swig of Pepper-Up and get some rest.”

Draco frowned. “Why did she think she might be getting the flu? Were there any symptoms? Did she mention how she was feeling?”

Clara looked thoughtful. “She didn’t say. Shivered once or twice though.”

The scratching of the quill indicated that Potter was at least smart enough to write down the important bits.

“Did she consume any food before or during the meeting? Or at any point after she’d come to work?”

“Her morning coffee and a scone, I think. That’s what she usually brought in.”

More quill scratching. Draco tried to tune it out as he thought.

“Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm her?” Potter asked once he was finished writing.

“Well, I already told the last Auror who asked, I don’t think you can be a politician without having somebody get upset at you. Got a threatening owl or two, but nothing recent.”

“Did she keep those letters?”

Clara shook her head and reached for a tissue. This seemed to take a lot out of her, and Draco thought he had almost everything on the poison that she could give him. He would have to check whether any of the men Secretary Fletcher had been meeting with had shown signs of illness; if the poison had been aerosolized, they might have inhaled a small dose of it, not enough to truly harm.

“Did you come into her office often?” he asked.

“No,” said Clara. “Only to the door, and sometimes to the desk, quick-like, to give her files. She was very professional, and so was I, we didn’t just stand and chat all the time.”

After several more questions for the purpose of nailing down the timeline, Draco decided there was no reason to torture the poor woman any longer. It was obviously upsetting for her, thinking back to the incident, and so he thanked her and shook her hand and assured her that they would find the Secretary’s murderer.

“What’d you reckon?” Potter asked him when they’d left Clara Goldhorn’s flat and were walking along the road. By unspoken agreement, they passed the closest apparition point, even though it was starting to snow. Draco could use the walk to clear his head, and Potter had been cooped up in the Department of Mysteries for days on end, and in Draco’s home after that, and he was obviously enjoying being outside. When Draco glanced at him, he was busy looking up to the sky and sticking out his tongue to try and catch a snowflake.

“She was feeling fine before the meeting, and then she kept shivering afterwards. The meeting lasted around forty-five minutes, and I’m going to assume that she talked to her assistant afterwards for no more than five minutes. _If_ she was poisoned during that meeting - and that’s a big ‘if’ - we’re looking at a maximum of just over an hour from the poison taking effect to death. The minimum would be just under ten minutes.”

“Alright,” said Potter in a way that told Draco he had no idea what to do with that information.

“What complicates things is the fact that I don’t know if it was the poison that caused you to be unconscious when you came through the Veil. I’ll have to run some tests and equations later, when I’m back in the lab.”

Potter nodded and was silent, looking thoughtful. Draco waited, but he didn’t seem to be ready to share. Instead, he tilted his head back again and stuck his tongue out.

“Really, Potter?” Draco sighed.

“What? It’s snowing, it’s practically required.”

“It is absolutely not.”

“Fine,” Potter said cheerfully. “Suppose I can catch snowflakes for the both of us, then.”

“As long as you don’t lick any lampposts while you’re at it.”

To his horror, Potter gave the row of lampposts lining the sidewalk a considering look. “Do you think it’s true that your tongue gets stuck if you try? Why would it do that? I’ve half a mind to find out if –”

“Oh, Merlin no,” Draco said and lunged for his sleeve when Potter made to approach the closest lamp. “If you do this, I will leave you here and your tongue will fall off because you won’t be able to pronounce any spells to get it loose.”

“Worth the risk,” Potter said cheerfully and continued his approach, dragging Draco along.

“Potter!”

“You might not want to shout my name quite so loudly.”

“Potter,” Draco hissed, more quietly but also with more emphasis as he moved to block the way. “No!”

“Fine,” said Potter, turned, and marched toward a different lamppost.

“Potter!”

It became a dance of agility and quickness, Potter apparently having the time of his life as he kept attempting to reach a post and Draco having visions of being forced to rescue Potter from potentially maiming himself. Potter kept laughing and sticking his tongue out as though he’d already reached the post, and Draco felt flushed and hot and tried to suppress the half-hysterical giggle that wanted to rise up in him.

“Oh, fine,” Potter said eventually and threw his hands up, coming to a stop. “Don’t let me have any fun.”

“Fun has nothing to do with it,” Draco sniffed. “It’s dangerous.”

“It is not.”

“You don’t even know that at all, you just _hope_ it isn’t dangerous.”

“Yes, alright, fine, whatever you say.” Potter stuffed his frost-reddened hands in his pockets. “Can we go, then, before I freeze my arse off?”

Draco, who was quite warm from the physical exercise he’d just gotten, rolled his eyes and turned to go.

Potter bolted for the nearest lamppost.

Draco turned just in time to see Potter give the post a good, long lick before pulling back with a triumphant look on his face.

“See!” he shouted. “Didn’t get stuck.”

“You lunatic!” Draco shouted back, rushing over as to keep Potter from trying again, just in case he was planning to. “Do you know how dirty that thing is?”

“Well, maybe my tongue is too,” Potter suggested with a saucy grin.

Draco had no idea what to say to that, so instead he took Potter by the elbow and apparated them both to the first spot he could think of that had no lampposts. It happened to be the park where Granger had brought him that first day when he hadn’t been able to wrap his mind around the idea of Potter being alive. Snow was falling here, too.

“Oh, this is nice,” said Potter, looking around. He didn’t question why Draco hadn’t wanted them to go indoors. Instead, he stretched out his hands and allowed Draco to cast a warming charm.

They took a quiet, comfortable walk together, breathing the cold air and hearing the snow crunch beneath their shoes, getting snowflakes caught in their eyelashes. It was strange, Draco thought, how companionable this felt when their history with each other was so tumultuous and antagonistic. But he wasn’t keen on questioning it, so instead he decided to imitate Potter’s enjoyment of the weather and looked up into the sky, determined to feel the tingle of snowflakes melting on his tongue.

~*~

Draco spent the rest of his day in the lab, making lists and running equations and coordinating with Victoria on what each of them would focus on in their research. When he came home in the evening, he wanted to cry with relief when there was a hot meal and a large cup of tea waiting for him under a stasis charm, even if it came with a side of Hermione Granger and more lists.

“We’ve been trying to figure out the order,” said Potter.

“Of what?”

“Of the clues.” He pointed at his arm. “Or rather, we’ve been trying to guess which one was the first one I wrote. Want a go?”

“Tell me your guesses first,” Draco demanded.

“I’ve been saying it has to be the ‘time loop’. Because there’s no point in leaving myself any messages if I don’t _know_ I’m going back in time, is there?”

“I think it depends on how the loop starts,” said Granger. “And that’s the thing I can’t figure out. Even if we still had access to something like a time turner, there’s no way to do it so that you lose your memory but not things like clues on your body – even by accident.”

“Well apparently there is,” said Potter, “because here we are.”

“I can tell you what I think was first,” said Draco. “The word ‘poisoned’. Maybe my name along with it.”

Potter looked surprised. “Why?”

“Because otherwise there wouldn’t have been reason for Granger or the other to put you in stasis so quickly, and you would have died.”

“That kind of makes sense.”

“It makes _complete_ sense.”

“But then why would I have written that on my hand unless I knew I’d be in a time loop?”

“All sorts of reasons.”

Potter crossed his arms and, by the looks of it, would have kept arguing, but Granger talked before he could. “I wonder whether you knew you’d be travelling in time before it actually happened, or to which point you’d travel. Or if you knew you would lose your memory before the first time you travelled.”

“In my opinion, the answer is ‘no’ to all of them,” said Draco.

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she told him.

“I think the answer is yes,” said Potter.

Draco huffed. “You just want to disagree with me out of principle.”

“Maybe,” Potter said and grinned. “Hermione, what do you think?”

“Hm?” she asked and stopped staring into space. “Oh, sorry, I’m still thinking about how the time travel might have been possible. It’s just… _so bizarre!_ And it’s even more maddening that I probably could have figured out some of it if the Time Room hadn’t been decommissioned.”

Potter looked up sharply right when something occurred to Draco as well. “Could this have something to do with the Time Room, ‘Mione? Is there a possibility…?”

“There is nothing left in there except for clocks and instruments to _measure_ time flow,” she told them. “It’s all passive, observational, nothing you could use to actually travel in time, or really influence time in any way at all.”

“Bollocks, I thought that was a really good possibility,” Potter grumbled.

“I would have brought it up by now it that was the case. But I will be going through inventory lists to make sure no item from the room was unaccounted for before they were all destroyed. The possibility is minute, but…” She shrugged. “I have no other ideas.”

“Neither do I,” said Draco, but they’re not going to come when I’m this tired, either.”

“Yes, sleep,” said Potter. “Sleep sounds like an excellent idea.”

The fact that Granger didn’t even protest told Draco she needed sleep just as badly, and he was glad when she Flooed home without delay. His pillow was calling, loudly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #12 – Lampposts in the falling snow


	13. December 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry about the rather large delay. I had a complete meltdown two days ago (not for writing-related reasons) that I'm still recovering from. I've had to eliminate as many stressors as possible for the time being, so I've purposely not written much as to take away the pressure coming from that direction, even though writing is generally very therapeutic for me. 
> 
> That said, I AM committed to writing this thing, but updates will probably be slower or irregular because circumstances are very much against me right now. Thank you for understanding. ❤

“Hermione asked us to stop by the department,” were the words that greeted Draco when he entered his home after a very long day at the lab. 

In between working with a very volatile partial antidote, cleaning up shards of exploded vials from the floor, and Draco enduring multiple barbed remarks and hateful looks from the parents of one of his patients, they had made progress with the magi-chemical indicator. However, it had raised as many questions as it had answered. They hadn’t managed to create anything that told them in how many ways the poison could potentially change, but they had found an indicator that revealed the poison had already changed its molecular structure – twice. One change, of course, was the one that allowed it to attack specific cells in the body, but Draco was at a loss for what the second change was. It worried him. The last thing he needed was Potter still being in danger because there was some other damage to his body that Draco hadn’t found out about.

“Okay,” he said now, carefully brushing off the bit of soot that clung to his robes.

“And she said to tell you that Zabini is rather upset with you. And I talked to Parvati as well, she gave me a few more facts that should help us.”

“Great.” Draco unwrapped his scarf from around his neck and tossed it over the back of the closest armchair. Then he froze. “What, by Merlin’s hairy bollocks, is that?”

“Er.” Potter followed his gaze. “A Christmas decoration?”

“What is it doing on my coffee table?”

“Spreading seasonal cheer.”

“Why?”

“Well, because Hermione said your flat looked sad, and then Marielle pulled these from somewhere and shoved them at me and said I had better spruce the place up a bit. And I am not about to fight with either of those two about it, sorry.”

“I wish I could argue, but I see your point.” Draco sank onto the sofa with a tired sigh and stared at the festive red candles in large rectangular glass containers spelling out the word ‘NOËL’. The candles were surrounded by red and gold potpourri. It was the absolute antithesis of how he was feeling. “Is the sickening Gryffindorishness on purpose?”

“Don’t think so,” Potter said and tilted his head. “Marielle didn’t go to Hogwarts. And besides, red and gold are very Christmassy colours, so that’s probably why.”

“Ah.” Draco yawned.

“Why don’t you have any other Christmas decorations in your flat, anyway?”

“Because I’m barely ever here, Potter, and I’m not big on Christmas anyway.”

“Well, I am, and I’m here a whole lot these days, so I’m going to decorate.”

Draco groaned. “Magic have mercy.” Then, he frowned. “Did you say Blaise is upset with me?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Why?”

“No idea. But since we need to go to the Department of Mysteries anyway, you can just ask him.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Draco groaned. “I’m bloody tired!”

“Well, sorry, but Hermione said.”

“That’s a shit reason,” Draco grumbled.

“She seemed agitated. Does that help?”

“No. No, it doesn’t. I haven’t eaten since lunch, either, and now it’s nearly ten.”

Potter rolled his eyes. “Fine, you big baby, we can walk part of the way and pick something up.”

“What sort of ‘something’?” Draco asked suspiciously.

“Whatever. What sort of street food do you like best?”

 _“Street food?”_ Draco asked. “Is that safe?”

Potter’s eyes damn near bulged out of his head. “Malfoy, are you…are you saying you’ve never had street food?”

“Of course not.” Draco sniffed and crossed his arms. “Do I look like someone who eats street food?”

“All sorts of people eat street food, Malfoy.” Potter came over to him and pulled him to his feet, then turned to blow out the candles. “Come on. It’s delicious. I’ll buy.”

“You have Muggle money on you?”

“Well, not exactly. I don’t even have galleons, actually. I’ll pay you back once I can access the Potter vault again, how’s that?”

That made no sense at all, but before Draco could point that out, he found himself being pulled out the front door and onto the strange and exotic streets of nighttime Muggle London.

~*~

Draco has stopped moaning with pleasure by the time they were in the lift but that didn’t mean he wasn’t enjoying the remainder of his meal. Potter, damn him, still hadn’t lost the smirk he’d worn ever since Draco had taken his very first bite.

Blaise was the first person they ran across in the department proper, and Draco couldn’t help but clutch his food more tightly. He didn’t know why Blaise was mad at him, so there was no sense in risking himself or his food before he found out. He’d seen his friend take cold, calculated revenge on other Slytherins, and Blaise knew to hit where it hurt.

“What?” was all Blaise asked. He sounded confused and, when Draco didn’t meet his eyes, turned to Potter for an answer.

“I think he’s afraid you’ll steal his falafel,” Potter said with a grin. Somebody, thought Draco, should tell him that gloating was not an attractive quality. Although, if he was honest, it didn’t do much to diminish Potter’s appeal, and –

Wait, where had _that_ come from?

Draco tried to look at Potter without making it obvious, which was a little difficult because both Potter and Blaise were staring at him now.

“What?” he asked.

“I asked why you weren’t at pub night. Forgot, I assume?”

Oh, fuck. Pub night had been two…no, three days ago, and that had been when…ah.

“I did forget. I’m sorry. In my defence, I learned some rather earth-shattering news that night.”

“Earth-shattering.” Blaise repeated it without any change in expression.

“When was pub night?” Potter wanted to know.

“The, er, the night Granger and Weasley came over.”

 _“Oh,”_ said Potter. “Sorry, Blaise, that may have been my fault. I really did tell him something he needed time to process.”

“And I suppose you can’t tell me what it was?” Blaise rolled his eyes as both Draco and Potter shook their heads. “Fine, you drama queens, I’ll forgive it this once. Oh, stop doing that, Draco, I’m not going to steal your bloody falafel!”

Draco stupidly looked down and realized he still had the falafel clutched to his chest. He cleared his throat and took another bite.

“Great,” said Potter, “now that that’s cleared up, do you know where Hermione is?”

“If she’s not in her office, try the Space Room or the Hall of Prophecy.”

Granger was indeed in the Space Room, which Draco had never actually seen the inside of. She seemed to be observing Saturn, standing in a corner and directing the spin of the rings with her wand. Draco was not at all surprised by the floating planets in the vast, dark room – it was sort of in the name, really – but he certainly hadn’t expected to be lifted off the floor after he’d taken three steps.

“Oh,” he said and peered down at his feet. He wasn’t very far up, only just floating, but it was disconcerting, nonetheless.

“That looks quite fun,” said Potter, but he made no motion to follow, so Draco doubted the veracity of the statement.

“But how do I get back down?” he wondered.

“Simply point your wand at the floor,” said Granger, who had come over to them. “Now, please, Draco. You’re sending salad and…is that tahini sauce? – floating toward Mercury.”

“Oh, right.” He hurried to comply. “And you’re still calling me Draco.”

“Well spotted.”

They left the Space Room and walked along the much brighter corridor to what seemed to be Granger’s office. One glance told Draco that Potter had been right – she looked tense and worried and somehow conflicted.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I really don’t want to start talking out here,” she said.

“Everything alright, ‘Mione?” Potter wanted to know.

“Yes, yes, of course, it’s nothing bad.”

“You look like it is,” Draco pointed out.

“Thanks,” she said. “That’s the sort of thing every girl likes to hear.” She held open the door to her office and shut it tightly once they were all inside, then went to her desk and lobbed an Instant Fireplace at the wall with too much force.

A glance told him that Potter was looking as concerned as Draco felt.

“Right, so,” she said, once the fire was bright and crackling. “I…I lied, yesterday, and I wanted to apologize for that. It’s not something that I think could be relevant, and I’ve kept this to myself for so long that frankly, I didn’t even think about mentioning it until I had time to think.”

That did nothing to make Draco feel more comfortable.

“So, what is it?” asked Potter.

“It’s to do with the time travel. Or, well, with time in general. There is next to no chance this could actually be what continues the loop.”

“I still have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Draco.

“I know, I know.” She went to the little safe and carefully removed the tinsel wrapped around it. Not books in there, after all, then. Draco couldn’t help but watch her enter the combination and trace a rune with her wand, but he forgot all about that once she opened the safe wide and straightened up from her crouch.

There was a clear, floating bubble the size of a coconut in there, and on the inside… _something,_ fine glittering particles, suspended and unmoving.

“What the hell is that?” he asked.

 _“Hermione,”_ Potter said after making a small gurgling noise. Judging by his tone, the little particles were something that made him very, _very_ nervous.

“Yes, I know, Harry,” she said. “It’s harmless, I promise.”

“What is it?” Draco asked again, impatiently.

And Granger said, “Time Sand.”

Draco stared with his mouth open. He cleared his throat after a good fifteen seconds of silent staring and asked, “The…the stuff that’s inside time turners?”

“Exactly,” she said. “There was a cabinet full of them that was damaged during the battle that happened in the department. The cabinet was hit, with a Reducto or a Stupefy or something similar; it fell and shattered, and they all broke. And then all of the pieces flew back together, and it stood there just the way it had been. And then, it shattered again, and it reversed the damage, and shattered again…”

“A time loop,” Draco said.

“Not quite, no, but similar. It never stopped. Nobody knew how to fix it or really do anything at all, so they simply left it alone, and…considering what happened later, with the bell jar, that was probably smart.”

“But obviously someone managed to stop it,” said Potter.

“Me,” Granger said simply. “It’s why they assigned me to the Time Room in the first place. It took me three years to figure it out a way to extract the sand, and actually doing it took weeks. It’s been in here ever since.”

“Why the everloving fuck did you _keep_ it?” Draco asked.

“Because,” she said sharply, “I don’t know what else to do with it. Vanishing it could be catastrophic. The bell jar caused a lot of unforeseen consequences, and that was just a minuscule bit of time current that, from all I understand, snapped back into its original position right away. An amount of Time Sand as large as this is far more unpredictable and powerful. It isn’t even a magical substance as such, otherwise I could at least measure and calculate, but this…it’s just…it’s this strange, foreign element.”

“But surely,” said Potter, “there is something else that could be done with it?”

“Releasing it anywhere isn’t an option either,” said Granger. “I just don’t know enough about it to be sure of the consequences.”

“So you put it in a safe in your office,” Potter said blankly.

“Well, yes,” she said. “But it’s as safe as I could make it. There is no way for it to get out. The bubble it’s in is unbreakable, and it will last for over a hundred years. Not even _I_ can dismiss the spell. So, you see? There is no way.”

“Usually, when people say that, they turn out to be wrong,” Draco muttered.

“I don’t know, Hermione.” Potter scratched his head. “You say it isn’t possible to use the sand, but even you have been stumped by how else this stupid loop might have happened.”

“Well, much as I don’t enjoy admitting it, even I don’t know everything, Harry,” she sighed.

Draco looked at Potter, and Potter looked back, and he could tell they were both thinking the same thing – how the hell else could it have happened?

He was still in a bit of shock over the entire revelation when they were walking back to the lifts, so he didn’t notice Marielle coming toward them until it was too late.

“Draco, Harry!” she said cheerfully. Her face was barely visible over the mountain of decorations she was carrying, but they could clearly see the reindeer antlers on her head. “I’m so glad I caught you. I have more things for your home!”

“Oh,” Draco said blankly, and then, “really, it’s not –”

Marielle just plain ignored him and shoved things at him, and Draco tried to refuse – politely, because being rude to a well-meaning Marielle would have been akin to kicking a crup – while Potter unhelpfully thanked her again and again. It took quite a while until she let them go.

When they were finally inside a lift, Draco carried a gigantic wreath and Potter clutched a garland made of tinsel. One end was draped over his shoulder. Draco was not sure whether that was on purpose.

“I get that she did what she thought was right,” Potter said abruptly as the lift was moving, “but… _fuck_. She should have told us as soon as it became clear time travel was involved.”

“Well, to be fair,” said Draco, “there was always a lot of other stuff going on.”

Potter made a face. “I never thought I’d see the day when you’re defending Hermione.”

“Seriously?” Draco nearly dropped the wreath in his exasperation. “Are we back to that?”

Potter had the gall to look confused. “To what?”

The lift doors opened. Draco stormed into the atrium with perhaps a little too much of a stomp.

“Back to thinking that part of me is still the same little arsehole I was in school, that I can never truly be a decent enough person.”

“Malfoy –”

“I’ve just…” To his horror, Draco’s eyes were starting to burn. He hurried faster towards the Floos. “I’ve worked so fucking hard to make up for it, for all of it, and it’s just not enough, never enough, and _fuck,_ it hurts to know that.” He groped blindly for the Floo powder and threw an entire fistful into the flames. By the time Potter had managed to follow, Draco had reached his bedroom, locked the door, and thrown the stupid wreath on the floor as an afterthought.

He pressed his forehead against the cold window and tried to breathe deeply with his eyes squeezed shut.

Potter had really hit a nerve. There were still people who reacted to his name with disgust, patients who refused to be treated by him. Shops who refused him service. Hell, only this morning, a parent had insisted on monitoring his every wand movement during Draco’s routine set of diagnostic spells just to make sure he didn’t cast an Unforgivable. He tried to tell himself that he’d earned it with his terrible choices, but it still hurt to be shown so clearly that he could never make up for it.

“Malfoy,” said Potter on the other side of the door, and when Draco didn’t reply, “Malfoy, don’t make me blast my way into the room.”

“Fuck you, Potter,” he said, too tired even to put anger into the words.

“Malfoy, open the door.”

Draco remained silent.

“Malfoy, I have the Elder Wand. I will obliterate the fucking wards on your house and apparate straight into your bedroom if I have to.”

That was when Draco remembered that Potter was a rash, hot-tempered Gryffindor who would probably actually do what he was threatening. With a sigh and a wave of his wand, he unlocked the door, but otherwise did not move.

“Fucking hell, Malfoy,” Potter said when he came in. “I’m sorry. That really wasn’t what I meant.”

“Oh, well, that makes it all better,” Draco said blandly. He opened his eyes and stared out into the darkness. The lights in the room weren’t on, so he was able to make out the broad shapes of the houses across the street.

He could feel Potter coming to a stop next to him. For a long moment, they were both silent. A car horn honked somewhere below.

“I didn’t mean it the way it came out,” Potter said then, again. “I only meant…well, I’m not sure what I mean. I think I’m just so used to being the one defending her that it felt strange to be on the opposite end of that, with you on her side.”

Draco said nothing.

“I really am sorry,” Potter continued. “I had no idea it was all still so raw for you. I suppose I should have…I never really thought about it.”

The car horn honked again – or perhaps it was a different one.

“Hermione could probably tell stories for hours about how oblivious and inconsiderate and thoughtless I can be. I…Malfoy?”

Draco sighed and finally turned his head. Despite the darkness, he could make out Potter’s contrite and concerned expression. “Alright,” he said. “Fine. You’re sorry. If you don’t mind, I’d like to go to sleep.”

“Alright.” Potter sounded unconvinced. He took a step back, but then hesitated and stepped forward again, stretching out his hand. The tips of his fingers ghosted across Draco’s cheek. “Good night.”

Draco dreamed of the dark streets of London, of drowning in sand, and of Potter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #13 – Christmas candle decorations spelling out ‘NOEL’


	14. December 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice is better than bubble wrap. 
> 
> Took me a while, but I'm at a point where I'll be able to write pretty consistently, so the rest of this should not have a hugely long wait between chapters. I hope you all enjoyed your holidays and are having a lovely new year. Thanks for being patient! ❤

Draco emerged from his bedroom the next morning tired, embarrassed, and with the side of his head throbbing. He’d banged it into his wardrobe after stumbling over the stupid wreath he’d forgotten to pick up from the floor.

All in all, it wasn’t a great start to the day. He knew he had to apologize to Potter for his outburst, but he was distracted to an absurd degree by the smell of bacon.

Potter had made breakfast?

Indeed, Potter had made breakfast, Draco was able to confirm as he entered the kitchen. A full English was waiting for him, looking absolutely mouth-watering. Potter was patting dry the last few rashers of bacon, but his head shot up when Draco entered, and he gave him a sheepish smile.

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said.

“Mind?” Draco asked blankly. “Oh, yes, of course I mind. How dare you make me delicious breakfast, you evil fiend.”

The corner of Potter’s mouth quirked up. “Eat,” he said and slid a fork Draco’s way.

Draco obeyed. Potter sat in front of his own plate, face flushed from cooking over heat and hair so messy it defied reason, and for a while they enjoyed their breakfast in companionable silence. But Draco knew he still needed to apologize, there was no use putting it off.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said.

Potter paused with a piece of fried tomato halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“I overreacted, obviously. I was tired and stressed, which isn’t an excuse, but –”

“No,” Potter said loudly, and his fork clattered as he tossed it on his plate. “No, don’t. You were completely right; what I said was unfair, even if I didn’t mean for it to be. You’ve proved a hundred times over how good a person you are now, I shouldn’t have acted as though it’s still in any way a surprise.”

“But –” Draco started.

“Stop arguing, you tosser, it wasn’t your fault.” Potter looked at him intently. Draco met his gaze, saw he was perfectly serious, remembered Potter was also a stubborn git, and figured it was no use arguing the matter.

“Alright. I’m not sorry about last night.”

“Glad we agree.” Potter grinned.

Draco nodded and speared a piece of black pudding with his fork. Something occurred to him and he narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. I didn’t have the ingredients for a full English.”

“Wondered when you’d notice,” Potter said. “Hermione fetched them for me when I talked to her yesterday afternoon, after I complained that your cupboards were atrociously bare.”

“I’m sorry,” Draco said and made a sound that nipped Potter’s attempt at protest in the bud. “No, this one I really do need to apologize for. I never thought about the fact that you’d be needing food if you spent all your days here, which is more than a bit stupid of me.”

“Mh, maybe,” said Potter. “On the other hand, you’ve spent all your time focused on things that are rather more important. Besides, I’m an adult, capable of taking care of myself.”

“I suppose.”

“Stop sounding sceptical.”

“Well.” Draco drew out the word like bubblegum and arranged his face into a doubtful expression.

“I will throw this tomato at you.”

“I haven’t showered yet anyway,” said Draco, meaning it as a joke, but apparently it wasn’t received that way because a moment later, a piece of fried tomato whizzed right past his head. “Potter! Stop wasting food!”

“Good point,” said Potter and went back to eating like he hadn’t just attempted a food fight.

“Honestly. I’ll tell Granger how well you respect the groceries she gave you.”

“Malfoy, she married  _ Ron. _ Do you honestly think this sort of thing still bothers her?”

“Yes.”

“Damn, I was hoping you’d fall for that.”

“It’s  _ Granger,” _ said Draco. “And I’m not an idiot.”

Potter smirked but didn’t say anything in response.

After he’d enjoyed his last sausage link, Draco placed his fork and knife down and rubbed first his belly and then his eyes. “What’s the plan for today?”

“Well.” Potter frowned and looked down at his hand, which was playing with his fork. “With everything that happened last night, I forgot to tell you what Parvati told Ron. She found a link between the first two victims. Might be nothing, but it’s worth checking out.”

“What’s the link?”

“Lena Fletcher turned down Orval Amado for a job – a position on her team.”

“Hm. Amado was the one who worked for the Ministry’s Magical Maintenance department, right?”

“Yes. He applied to work for Secretary Fletcher, his boss even recommended him, but she turned him down in favour of a woman…Mercedes…I forgot her last name. We might perhaps look into her as a suspect, but she’s been on a diplomatic assignment in South America for the last two months, so it’s not terribly likely.”

Draco sighed. “We should talk to Amado’s boss.”

“I hoped we might do that today, actually.”

“You can’t be there,” Draco said when that occurred to him. “Not during daytime. It’s too risky, someone might recognize you through the glamour.”

“You should do the questioning with Parvati,” said Potter.

Draco gave him a mistrustful look. “What, that’s it? No arguments?”

“No,” Potter said, “I do have an invisibility cloak.”

Draco shook his head. “It still shocks me. I mean, not that you have an invisibility cloak – I knew that obviously – but the fact that you’ve possessed one of the Hallows since first year of Hogwarts.”

“You’ll get used to the idea,” Potter assured him. “Oh, and after questioning Amado’s boss, Ron and Hermione wanted to take me somewhere nice, spend an evening out, so to speak. We could all use the distraction and a bit of fun. I’m not sure yet what we’ll do, but you’re welcome to come along.”

“As long as it’s not ice skating,” said Draco. “I tried that once. It was not pretty.”

“Huh,” said Potter.

“What?”

“It’s just, ice skating seems like something you’d be good at. You’re so…” Potter trailed off, eyes flicking down and back up, and then, to Draco’s surprise, he blushed.

“So what?”

But, disappointingly, Potter shook his head and remained silent.

“Right,” said Draco, and directed his plate to the sink with his wand. “You cooked, I’ll do the washing up, and then we’ll get going.”

~*~

Draco was very glad that neither Parvati Patil nor Begonia Button were paying much attention to him as they entered her little office, and so it wasn’t a difficult feat to hold the door open for an invisible Potter. He couldn’t quite figure out which corner of the room Potter had gone to stand in, however, so all he could do was hope that nobody would bump into him once they left.

“Right, so, how can I help you?” Miss Button asked unenthusiastically. Her navy-blue robe was dusty, which Draco supposed wasn’t surprising for someone working in Magical Maintenance, but her stringy hair had actual dirt trails in it, which was very distracting and made him feel a desperate need for a shower and shampoo.

“We have a few more questions for you,” Parvati explained. “Specifically, the expert we brought in would like to clarify the timeline.” She indicated Draco, who had covered his distinctive hair with a stocking cap and applied a slight glamour to his features in an attempt to prevent news of his involvement getting back to Robards.

“Right,” Miss Button said and gave Draco an unimpressed look.

“Thank you for your full cooperation,” Parvati said woodenly. By the looks of it, she was not thrilled to be in Miss Button’s presence either.

“To start,” said Draco, “you were the one who found Mr. Amado?”

She nodded. “Orval never signed off on his tasks for the night, so when I came in early morning, I had to go and check whether it was all done.” She sighed, as though to show that her underling’s death had been a great inconvenience. “Found him near the weather controls. Shouldn’t have been a surprise, I suppose – the windows were displaying a storm worse than Britain’s had in a few centuries. I got complaints that people were worried their window glass might crack. Not how it works, obviously. Idiots.”

“Right, I remember that,” said Parvati. “I came in and there was a tornado carrying a cow past my window. Bit disturbing.”

Miss Button gave her a blank stare. “It’s not real,” she said, very slowly.

“I’m aware it’s not, but it’s disturbing nonetheless,” Parvati snapped.

“So,” Draco said loudly, “Orval. Was that the first time he forgot to sign off on his tasks?”

Miss Button snorted loudly. “Ha! No. He forgot all the time. Not the most reliable bloke.”

“Why’d you recommend him to Secretary Fletcher then?”

“Well,” she said, and chewed her lip violently.

“Yes?” Parvati prompted.

“Well, I wanted to get him away from me, alright? I couldn’t fire him, and I couldn’t stand to be around him anymore, so I tried to foist him off on her, but she didn’t want him either.”

Parvati’s brow knitted. “Why couldn’t you fire him?”

“Not part of the job,” she said sullenly. “My boss, Soots, he’s the one who does that, and he said Orval was a great bloke.”

“But he wasn’t to you?”

“He wasn’t to any woman,” she said. “Always thought he was better’n me, got upset when I told him what to do even though I’m his boss. Kept asking me out, got upset when I said no, said all these gross things to me.”

Draco and Parvati shuddered as one.

“That sounds really unpleasant,” said Parvati. “Sorry you went through that.”

“Well, he’s gone now, thank Merlin,” she said and glared at them as though daring them to comment.

“Who was the last person to see him?” Draco asked instead.

Miss Button sniffed. “Starling, I think, late at night,” she said. “She left at half ten. He was supposed to leave too, but he wasn’t nearly finished with his work – spent all of his time chatting up some floozy – and I told him if he didn’t get it done I’d assign him rubbish-bin duty in the Beast Division for a month.”

“Who was the, er, floozy?” asked Parvati.

“Don’t know,” said Miss Button, bitterly. “She works here but I don’t know where. Tall and curly hair and always batting her lashes and moving her hips around. You know the sort.”

“Ah,” Draco said awkwardly. “And what time did you find Mr Amado?”

“Ten after six in the morning, I think.”

“Starling said there was nothing off about him when she saw him last,” Parvati told Draco. “And that his last meal was a sandwich at about six in the evening.”

“Hm,” Draco said thoughtfully as he made a note. “Could we see the weather controls, where he was found?”

It was a bit tricky to manoeuvre in the small office so that Potter would have enough space to avoid both Parvati and Miss Button as they went for the door. Draco passed it off as mere politeness and motioned for them to go first as he stepped aside, casting his gaze around the room even though he knew bloody well he wouldn’t be able to see anything. A moment later, he felt a hand on the small of his back and managed to relax a fraction.

“Here we are,” Miss Button said as she led them into the weather control room. It was small, with a large window taking up one entire wall and several shelves of small vials, some of them empty, most filled with liquid in shades of yellow, blue, grey, and white. Draco looked around with interest while trying to remain as far as he could from Miss Button, who kept scratching her head vigorously.

“How does it work, controlling the weather?” Parvati asked. “How did the huge storm happen?”

Miss Button pointed at a shallow basin that was about three-quarters full, shimmering a very pale yellow. “That’s today. I poured in a few drops of snow last night, that’s the white vials, and left it to settle. Then a drop of yellow this morning, which is sunshine. Would you excuse me a moment?” She scratched her head again and pushed past Parvati, out of the room.

Draco looked up at the window, which reflected the selection, a soft blanket of snow beneath a clear ice blue sky, a pale sun.

“Interesting.” Parvati had stepped up to a shelf. “Blue sky, rain, wind, hail, even. They’re all labelled, it would be difficult to make a mistake big enough to create such a storm.”

“I’m sure it takes a while to learn to combine it all properly, though,” Draco said.

“Amado has worked here for years; he’d have learned it a long time ago. When the room was first examined, after, there were at least ten vials on the floor. He should have known that was far too much.”

“That’s true,” Draco said thoughtfully. He looked at the basin again, at the window, at the vials, and realized something. “It was a cry for help. He knew something was happening to him. Maybe he wasn’t strong enough to walk, and he figured if someone were to complain about the weather, they’d find him. So he messed it up as much as he could.”

“That makes sense,” said Parvati. “Does it matter for us though?”

“It’s very helpful, actually,” said Draco. “Secretary Fletcher felt hot and cold, but she thought she was sick, not poisoned. She wasn’t far away from help but didn’t call her assistant, so she must not have known what was happening. Amado was a different story. He knew, somehow. The weather was the best way for him to communicate.” He frowned. “Did Amado cast any spells? Did you check his wand?”

“Yes, of course. That’s another thing that doesn’t make sense – he cast all the normal maintenance spells that night, like you’d assume, but the last spell before he died…well, it was Calvorio, a hair-loss curse.” She sounded confused, and Draco couldn’t blame her.

“Anything else that was weird?”

“The spell before that one was a fish transformation. Not only do I have no clue why he cast it, but we didn’t find any fish nearby, so it must not have worked. And Piscifors is quite obscure, I have no earthly idea why he would have chosen to cast it.”

“Strange,” said Draco.

“Indeed. Do you need anything else? I think Begonia is getting rather fed up with us.”

“I think that’s all,” said Draco, turned toward the exit, and froze when he noticed the potted fern next to it.

_ Check in plant,  _ he remembered.

“The room has been searched?” he asked as he approached it.

“Quite thoroughly,” said Parvati.

“Ah.” The fern looked utterly normal, the soil in the pot loose. He ran his fingers through it just in case.

“What are you doing?” asked Parvati.

“Nothing.” He straightened up. “Apologies. I’m ready to go.”

~*~

“I was hoping there was something in the plant,” Draco said much later, when they were back at his flat and he had changed into less official-looking robes.

“There was,” Potter told him cheerfully, making Draco raise his eyebrows. “I dug it up while the lot of you were preoccupied with vials of sunshine and the like.”

“What was it?”

“No idea.” Potter reached into his pocket and produced a small silver cube, its only distinguishing feature a small button on one side. “I pressed it, but nothing happened.”

“Strange little thing, isn’t it?” Draco frowned at it. “Well, that’ll give you something to do when none of us have time and you’re stuck in the flat.”

“True,” Potter said and had barely put the cube back in his pocket when the Floo whooshed.

“Anyone here?” Weasley called from the next room.

“No!” Potter shouted back.

“Funny,” said Weasley a moment later, from the doorway this time. “Are you two ready to go?”

Draco sighed. “If I must.”

“You don’t have to come along.”

“Yes, he does,” Potter said decisively and led Draco along by his elbow.

“Hi Harry, Draco,” said Granger, who was standing next to the fireplace and busy vanishing soot from her clothes. “I stumbled, don’t laugh. Are you ready to go?”

“Apparently,” Draco said.

They made their way to a nearby Christmas market, all picturesque lit-up stalls. Delicious smells filled the air, spicy, sweet, and hearty, and a brass ensemble played classic Christmas songs as visitors meandered through the market.

“Oh, gingerbread,” Granger sighed, looking blissed. “Just what I’ve been craving.”

“I’ll get you some,” Weasley promised her immediately and took out his coin purse, then looked around. “Is this place muggle?”

“It is,” said Granger.

“Right.” Weasley put the coin purse back and took out a different one. “I’ll be right back.”

While they waited, Draco took a good look around. “I’ve never been to one of these,” he admitted. “What sort of things do they sell at these stalls?”

“Oh, all sorts,” said Granger. “Anything festive and Christmassy. Lots of food and drink, but also gifts and decorations. I’m planning on buying quite a few gifts tonight, actually.”

Oh,  _ shit.  _ Draco hadn’t even thought about gifts, about the fact that Christmas was a mere eleven days away. Ordinarily, he would only have to buy for his mother and Pansy, plus something small for a few coworkers at St. Mungo’s, but his involvement with Potter’s reappearance and the poisonings changed things. Merlin, Potter was  _ living _ with him at the moment – Draco couldn’t just ignore that. And he’d been spending time with Granger and, Merlin help him, even Weasley, so…fuck. He’d better get to work.

“Would it be possible to borrow some Muggle money for the evening?” he asked reluctantly. “I didn’t bring any.”

Granger’s head turned fast, sending her hair flying. “Oh! Yes, of course, I’m sorry I didn’t think to tell you ahead of time that you might need some.”

“I might need to borrow some, too,” Potter said sheepishly from under his hood. He was wearing a glamour once again, but none of them had wanted to take any chances, so he’d hidden his face as much as possible.

“Of course –” Granger started, but she looked a bit worried, so Draco interrupted her.

“If you don’t have enough, I can always come back another time.”

“No, no, we should be fine. Unless anyone wants to buy something extravagant – then yes, we’ll have to come back. This place will be here until Christmas.”

“Brilliant,” said Potter. It was at that point that Weasley hurried back with a paper bag of gingerbread, and they made their way further into the market.

There really were a huge number of things for sale in the stalls, and it took only a few minutes for Draco to realize that he absolutely would need to come back. Handmade scented candles, apple and cinnamon and so many more, his mother would  _ love _ those, and one of the delicate snow globes too. Pansy’s sweet tooth and sense of humour would certainly enjoy a huge gingerbread heart, lovingly decorated with sugar rosettes and the words “Merry Fucking Christmas”. And of course, he couldn’t very well buy gifts for Potter, Weasley and Granger while they were here to witness it.

“Look!” Potter said excitedly and pointed. There was a stall selling wooden pyramids, each with several levels consisting of platforms with tiny wooden figurines on top, angels and shepherds and wise men, animals, musicians and trees. Each had candleholders on each side and a rotor on top, and Draco could see the display one with the candles lit, how the heat from the fire made the rotor turn, and how the entire pyramid turned with it, wooden figurines moving in an endless parade, round and round.

Draco didn’t realize that both he and Potter were standing there with their mouths open until Granger started laughing at them.

“If you like it this much, get one!” she told them.

“Not now,” said Draco. “We need our hands free if we want any food or drink.”

“Good point.” Potter looked around. “I know I saw big pretzels somewhere; I can still smell them.”

“I need something sweet,” said Draco. “What is a good traditional Christmas market sweet, apart from gingerbread?”

“Probably the almonds,” said Granger. “Over there, they sell almonds that are cooked so they get coated with a shell of crunchy sugar. They’re very lovely.”

“What’s wrong with gingerbread?” asked Weasley. “You can never have enough of that.”

“I can get gingerbread elsewhere,” said Draco.

“They’re selling spiced mulled wine over there,” Potter said. “I’ll get us all a cup, how about it?”

“Er, Harry,” Granger said nervously.

He turned to her. “Oh, right, sorry, I forgot you’re pregnant.”

Everybody froze.

Potter’s eyes were wide with horror behind his glasses. Granger paled. Weasley’s mouth was slowly dropping open.

_ Oh shit, _ was the only thought in Draco’s head.

“’Mione?” Weasley asked, sounding small and lost.

“I…” She paused, moistened her lips, opened her mouth again but still didn’t seem to have any idea what to say.

Potter seemed too horrified by what he’d blurted out to do anything at all, so Draco took him by the elbow.

“We’ll give you two some privacy,” he said.

They had barely walked twenty steps when Potter flung himself into the space between two stalls and groaned, hiding his face in his hands. “Oh fuck,” he said. “Oh, Merlin.”

“Stellar work,” Draco said but put a hand on Potter’s shoulder that hopefully conveyed some manner of comfort. “Breathe. It was less than ideal, but she should have told him by now, anyway.”

“But it wasn’t my choice to make,” Potter said helplessly.

“Well, no. You certainly fucked up, but we’ve all had a lot on our minds. I’m sure she’ll forgive you for forgetting it was a secret.”

“Yes,” Potter said, and then, “oh, Merlin, I cannot believe I did that.” He looked so despondent that Draco stepped in front of him and laid his free hand on Potter’s other shoulder, which apparently conveyed an invitation because a moment later he had an armful of Potter clinging to him and pressing his forehead to Draco’s.

And that felt intimate as hell.

Potter’s face was so close. His hood tickled Draco’s temple. Draco could feel his breath, his body heat, and his own heartbeat rang in his ears and drowned out the many noises that surrounded them. He felt very far away from everything except the man he was touching.

Something in his belly was warming rapidly.

“Draco,” Potter said with a clear of his throat, and just like that, the noise came rushing back in. The sensation was disorienting and made it impossible to focus. Draco stepped back before he could help it.

“We should…we should…” He didn’t even know how to end the sentence, but Potter was so far away now, and it felt  _ wrong _ and Draco was lost, so he supposed it didn’t matter anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #14 – A Christmas market


	15. December 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice is the rainbow to my writerly thunderstorm.

Draco looked down at the corpse of Orval Amado and tried his damndest to remain calm.

“There has got to be some sort of explanation,” said Victoria, safely on the other side of the room and facing the wall, so she wouldn’t have to look at what Draco was doing. He couldn’t really blame her – she did not have Draco’s training, so he wouldn’t have expected her to have developed the clinical detachment that allowed him to cut open a corpse and take samples. He still didn’t like the experience, but it wouldn’t give him nightmares.

“Draco?” Victoria asked.

He blinked. “Sorry. I was thinking.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s good.”

He snorted inelegantly. “I’m not getting anywhere, which is decidedly _not_ good.”

She sighed and massaged her temples. “Can we close him back up and discuss this elsewhere? The smell is getting to me.”

“Me too, but I’m worried I’ve overlooked something obvious. I can only do this once, Briar said he’d bury his brother as soon as I was done. I don’t plan to take up grave robbing.”

“I can’t think of what that obvious thing would be. You’ve covered everything I’d have thought of and more.”

“Yes, but if I wasn’t missing something vital, we’d have our answer by now. I _need_ to know how that poison enters the body.”

“And you’re sure your detection spells are sound?”

“Yes.” Draco wished he could run his hands through his hair or even just tap his finger to the outside of his thigh, but he was wearing gloves smeared with blood and bile and other things, and he couldn’t help but think that taking them off now would be akin to giving up.

Victoria closed her eyes. “Take me through it,” she said. “Maybe going over it again out loud will help.”

“Okay, right.” Draco took a deep breath, inhaling the stale scent of the mask covering his mouth and nose. Victoria had offered to put a drop of lavender oil on it, but if it wasn’t enough to eliminate the smell of death entirely, Draco would never be able to take another lavender bubble bath in his life. 

He stared at the corpse, ordered his thoughts, and started.

“I’ve scanned all the layers of the skin and the muscles beneath with three different spells. None of them show an unusually high concentration of poison damage in one area, so it can’t have been a contact poison, and the few scratches Orval has are nowhere near big enough to deliver a large enough amount of the poison even if he’d bathed in it, so it’s not subcutaneous either. He doesn’t have any injuries that go deeper than that, so it can’t have been intravenous. That would be unlikely anyway, unless we’re talking about a muggleborn with medical training.”

“Right,” Victoria said. “Didn’t touch or pierce the skin, got it. What does that leave?”

“The only other ways I know of to deliver a poison is to inhale it or to ingest it, so either the lungs or the gastrointestinal tract. And I’ve _looked_ there and found nothing.”

“What if the poison was attacking the body slow enough for the blood to distribute it everywhere before it was doing noticeable damage?” Victoria asked.

“Not what I saw under the microscope,” said Draco. “This one is fast.”

“Well…” She sighed. “Then I’m all out of ideas.”

“Fuck,” Draco said succinctly and started taking his gloves off. He had felt frustrated and short-tempered since the morning, and it was only getting worse. The autopsy hadn’t helped a lick. “How the hell is it so well-distributed? It shouldn’t be possible; it just doesn’t fit.”

He washed his hands and afterwards reached for his wand and cast a Scourgify on them for good measure. Then. he began the task of closing Orval back up, carefully stitching together the cuts he had made. He was thankful he could use magic for it. He didn’t think he’d have the stomach to do it the muggle way.

“Early dinner?” Victoria offered. “I’ll buy.”

“Would you mind not talking about food until we’re out of this room?”

“Oh.” She grimaced. “Right.”

By unspoken agreement, they made their way up to the staff portion of the roof garden. It was a relief to finally rip his breathing mask off and suck in fresh, cold air. Draco leaned against a wall as he did so, trying to focus on each inhale and exhale, to quiet the anxiety that had been his companion all day and to relax the muscles that had been tense for hours.

“You’re not doing well,” Victoria observed.

“No,” he admitted, and then added, “It has nothing to do with work.”

“What does it have to do with, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Draco considered it. They were nowhere near close enough that he would ever be tempted to pour out his heart to her, but they had developed something like a tentative friendship during their antidote work, and he did feel comfortable with her.

“My roommate,” he admitted.

“I didn’t know you had one.”

“It’s temporary. He’ll find his own place soon, but for now he’s in my guest room. And I don’t mind, really I don’t, but things are complicated between us, and it’s only getting worse.” He grimaced. “Yesterday…was interesting. I felt things I wasn’t expecting.”

“Oh,” Victoria said meaningfully.

“I doubt it means much, but…” Draco shook his head. “It’s strange, and I don’t know what to make of it.”

“Have you mentioned anything to him about it?”

“No.” Draco admitted. “I haven’t talked to him at all since it happened. I left for work earlier than normal so I could avoid him.”

Victoria rolled her eyes. “You’re an idiot.”

“Yes,” Draco agreed.

“Talk to him.”

“Honestly, I don’t see how that will help.”

Victoria rolled her eyes again. “Oh, yes, why would you want to know what he’s feeling, that couldn’t possibly help.”

“I don’t even know what _I’m_ feeling.”

“Figure it out.”

“I’m _trying_ to.”

Victoria took out her wand and cast a Tempus. “It’s past five already, and your brain is definitely toast for the day. Go home, see what happens when you’re around him, report back to me tomorrow.”

“Yes ma’am,” Draco said drily, and left without arguing, which told him enough about how much he needed a break.

~*~

When he came home, Potter was there, but he wasn’t the only one. Susan Bones was sitting in the kitchen with him, tear tracks drying on her face as they talked.

“Do you believe me now?” Potter was asking gently. His hand covered hers. “That you’re blameless?”

She sniffed. “Starting to.”

“You had no way of knowing.”

“My mind understands that, but the rest of me is still having trouble.”

It was clearly a private conversation and Draco tried to step away from the doorway, but that was when she spotted him.

“Bones,” he said with a nod.

“Malfoy,” she replied, looking unsure what to make of him.

“Draco,” said Potter, and _what the fuck,_ since when was he calling Draco by his first name too? Draco swallowed down the jolt of _something_ that felt like anxiety except not really, took a calming breath, and managed a terse nod.

“Harry told me you healed him,” said Bones. “I…thank you for that. It’s a shock, seeing him again, but I’m glad I could.”

“Well,” Draco said, “it’s part of the job.”

Potter frowned, and Draco decided self-defenestration sounded like an excellent idea. Could he have sounded any more cold-hearted?

“I mean,” he said, clearing his throat, “you two clearly have more to talk about. I’ll leave you to it.”

He fled but had barely reached the living room before Potter caught up to him.

“Is it really alright?” he asked.

“Is what alright?”

“If we keep blocking the kitchen? I mean, it’s your home, and –”

“It’s fine,” Draco interrupted him. “I was planning to…to talk to…Granger. I’ll do that now.”

“Oh,” Potter said and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Alright. Will you tell her thanks? She’s the one who went to talk to Susan and told her about what happened to me.” He was still frowning, and Draco wanted to explain that he hadn’t meant to sound like an arsehole, but the words wouldn’t come.

“I will,” he said.

“Thank you.”

Once Potter had left the room, Draco ignored the temptation to bang his head against the wall and instead reached for the Floo powder.

“Granger-Weasley residence,” he demanded tersely. When the call connected, he was faced with Granger, curled up on the sofa and reading a book in the soft glow of what seemed to be a messy bundle of muggle fairy lights lying next to her.

She looked up and smiled. “Draco. Is everything alright?”

“Yes. May I come through though? I wanted to talk to you.”

“Sure,” she said, and Draco Flooed over.

By the time he got there, she had saved her spot with a bookmark and summoned two glasses of water. She was hastily trying to untangle the string of fairy lights but gave up after a moment, instead unplugging them and moving them out of the way with a frustrated swipe of her arm.

“Problems?” Draco asked.

“I’ve been trying to hang these up, but as you can see, it’s not going well. I don’t have the patience to fix this mess tonight.

“Hm. I know a spell that can untangle a rope, I can try it if you like?”

“I considered using one, but I was too afraid the bulbs might get damaged. I’d just pack them away entirely, but I do like the light. It’s soothing, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Draco responded absently. “What if we spell the lights shatterproof, just while we get it sorted out?”

Granger lit up like a Christmas tree, which told Draco more than anything that she hadn’t had a great day. Fairy lights might have been pretty and soothing, but it was still an excessive reaction to have at the prospect of untangling a string. Without hesitation, Draco cast the shatterproof spell followed by a careful untangling spell, and the two of them watched the string of lights wiggle and slide, snagging occasionally until Granger gently tugged at the problem spots to eliminate them.

“Perfect,” she said once it was done and the string of lights took up the entire length of the sofa. With a flick of her wand, she plugged them back in and then used a sticking charm to affix them to the ceiling. Dimming the other light sources in the room brought about a peaceful, cosy atmosphere that Draco welcomed with open arms. He sat with a sigh that was a whole lot deeper than he had planned.

“Oh dear,” she said. “That does not sound promising.”

“I’m just frustrated. Before I get into that though, and before I forget, Potter says thanks for sending Bones to him.”

“Oh, of course. She’s been feeling guilty for far too long, don’t you think? Besides, I needed a distraction.” She bit her lip.

“I take it your husband is upset?”

“Very.” She sighed. “And he’s not wrong, I should have told him days ago, especially since you and Harry both already knew.”

“Potter felt terrible about it,” said Draco and tried not to remember the sensation of their breaths mingling in the winter air as they leaned into each other.

“Well, I mean, I wish he hadn’t done it, of course,” Granger said with a sigh, “but this whole mess wouldn’t have happened if only I’d told Ron right away. I can only blame myself.”

“How bad is it?” he asked.

“He’s not talking to me at all right now. Left a note saying he’d be with his parents for the foreseeable future.”

Draco winced.

“I can only hope that Molly’s enthusiasm about another grandchild will be catching,” she said. “Anyway, this isn’t why you’re here.”

“No.” Draco reached for his water, hand brushing the book Granger had been reading. He glanced at it and frowned at the title. “Cryptography?”

“Still working on the message on Harry’s arm, the one that’s for me.” She grimaced. “It’s not helpful though. I’ve nailed down the encryption method – it’s simple, really, it only needs a single password, six letters or less – but I can’t move beyond that because I have no idea what the word is. And from what I’ve gathered, there is no way to narrow it down.”

“I suppose you’re tried all our names and such?”

“Yes,” she said. “First and last, nicknames, name fragments, initials…nothing.”

“Everything to do with the case, or with what happened? Poison, veil, time, loop, that sort of thing?”

“Yes.”

“Things from our history? Or from just yours and Harry’s? Any secrets you two share?”

She nodded and sighed.

“Well, fuck,” he said.

“Concisely put.”

“Hallow?” he suggested.

“Oh. Not a bad idea.” She pulled her wand out and took the bookmark from between the pages, making Draco realize it was where she had noted down the code. “Secretum Lingua Videre Hallow,” she said, and touched her wand to the parchment. 

“And?”

“No, didn’t work.” She put the strip of parchment aside with a sound of frustration. 

Hesitantly, Draco suggested, “We should think about this in time loop terms. It might be something that won’t matter until later. Maybe there will be a development in a few days that gives you the password.”

“Maybe. Or maybe Harry tried to be a little too clever when he encoded it. I’ve asked him, but nothing he suggested worked either. Maybe neither of us can follow his thinking.”

“Great,” Draco said. “Potter can’t follow his own thinking. Bit worrisome, all things considered.”

“Well, it definitely makes things harder. But I’ll keep trying every new name and word I come across, hopefully I’ll get it at some point. Every time I’m remotely bored, I try new words, anything I can think of.”

“Good.”

She tucked the strip of parchment back into the book. “You still haven’t told me why you’re here, you know.”

“Right, here’s a progress report on the poison: I’ve made no progress.”

“At all?”

“Did an autopsy today. Apparently, Briar Amado doesn’t mind someone cutting his brother open if he gets some drinking money out of it.”

“Lovely.”

“Indeed. I tried everything I could think of to figure out how the poison enters the body, but I found nothing. The poison is distributed completely evenly. With the speed I’ve seen it work, that shouldn’t be possible.”

Granger frowned. “Odd. So apparently it only starts working after it is well-distributed?”

“That…yes, I suppose that is what I’m saying.” Draco ran a hand through his hair and then made a face about it. It felt good not to have to suppress his favorite nervous tic because of blood-smeared gloves, but he'd overcompensated and now he was sure his hair looked beyond stupid. “But how does it _know_ it’s well-distributed? I mean, it’s a complex poison, we know that much, but even a complex magical poison can’t be that self-aware.”

“Maybe the poison isn’t making the decision,” she suggested. “Maybe something – some _one_ – else is. The poison is dormant in the blood until…until a certain thing happens, something external.”

“Oh, Merlin,” Draco breathed. “It’s a _trigger._ The poison has a thrice-damned trigger.”

“Well, yes, that’s what I just said.”

“Granger, it’s on Harry’s _skin._ His arm says the trigger is vocal! It…bloody hell, it needs a password to start working.”

Granger’s eyes had gone large and round. “That’s brilliant,” she said. “Oh, that is _brilliant,_ Draco, you’ve _got_ it!” She surged forward, and before he could process what was happening, Draco had been hugged enthusiastically. He froze, but Granger didn’t seem to notice, instead pulling away and jumping to her feet. “I’ve got to tell Harry!”

“But –” Draco started, and promptly gave up because she had already thrown in the Floo powder. Potter was in the room a second later – or at least that was what it felt like – and Draco had had no chance to prepare.

“Brilliant,” Potter said, just like Granger had. “Now we just need to figure out what this password is, on top of the other one.” Still, he gave Draco a happy grin, green eyes lit up.

Draco made a grab for his water glass because his throat was suddenly bone-dry. He truly wished he’d never had that moment of realization the night before. It was messing with him something fierce.

“Susan doing alright?” Granger asked.

“Fine, yeah,” said Potter. “I feel terrible that she’s gone through so much. I mean…imagine thinking that your Auror partner is dead because of the mistakes you made.”

“She didn’t really make any mistakes in the first place,” Draco pointed out. “I can’t fault her for anything I saw in that memory.”

“Ron and I told her the same,” said Granger, “but hearing it and believing it are two completely different things. I’m glad she’ll be able to start healing now.”

“Really I’m the one who should feel guilty,” said Potter, and he looked and sounded sad now, which made something in Draco’s chest pull uncomfortably, and Merlin _fuck_ , this was getting so out of hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #15 – A tangled string of Christmas lights


	16. December 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Etalice is better than raspberry chocolate cake.

“My fiancée isn’t here,” said Lyman Selwyn from behind the gate, and looked at them with so much distaste that it made Draco feel as though he hadn’t showered in a week. But it didn’t surprise him, not really. Most of the more traditional pureblood families were horrified by what he’d become – a Malfoy, once so highly regarded, was now _working._ With his _hands._ In a _hospital. The horror!  
_

“We’d like to ask you a few questions,” Potter said behind him, voice calm and professional.

“What? No.” Selwyn crossed his arms.

“I’m afraid I must insist,” Draco said and took a step closer. He’d had an inkling Selwyn wouldn’t be the slightest bit cooperative and had taken the time to think of ways to make him. “Unless, of course, you don’t mind people knowing that you refused to help solve your mother’s murder. And, oh, right, you’re inheriting everything, aren’t you? I wonder what they’ll make of that.”

Selwyn spluttered as his face began to darken in colour.

“May we come in?” Potter asked, still the epitome of politeness.

“No! Absolutely not!”

“Alright,” said Potter, and Draco watched with amusement as Potter took out his wand, transfigured a medium-sized rock into a chair, and went to sit down right there in the driveway, quill poised. “Don’t mind me, I’ll only be taking notes.”

“Notes about what?” Selwyn glared at them, but Draco, who had been glared at by people like Bellatrix and Fenrir Greyback on many occasions, remained unimpressed.

“You were with your mother when she died, weren’t you?”

“I’m leaving,” Selwyn hissed and turned away from them. Draco opened his mouth to call him back, but he was beaten to it.

“You know, I’m on excellent terms with Rita Skeeter,” said Potter. “She’s been looking for a bit of pureblood family gossip, did you know that? Apparently, Witch Weekly readers love that sort of thing.”

Selwyn, who had started to walk away from them, froze.

“Really, it’s only a few questions,” Potter said placidly. “Won’t take much of your time at all.”

“Who are you?” Selwyn asked, looking him up and down.

“Hank Partridge,” Potter said. “I’m actually related to Rita, she’s my second cousin. And let me tell you, she has only gotten more vicious with age. You wouldn't _believe_ what family reunions are like.”

“Right,” Selwyn said weakly.

“So.” Draco cleared his throat. “You were with your mother when she died?”

Selwyn sighed deeply, opened his mouth, closed it again, and let his shoulders slump. “Yes,” he said.

“And your fiancée, June, she was there too?”

“Yes.”

“And what were the three of you doing?”

“We were eating dinner.”

“Hm,” said Potter and started rifling through his notebook, which Draco knew to be empty. “Let me see…I don’t think that’s what June said the last time she was questioned…”

“We weren’t…I mean…” Selwyn sounded strangled. “It was, well, we _had_ been eating dinner.”

“And then?” Draco asked.

Selwyn’s eyes darted from Draco to Potter and back. “Do I have your word that Skeeter won’t get a hold of this?”

“As long as you answer our questions and tell the truth, we will not share anything outside of the department. You have my word.”

“Right. We were arguing, if you must know.”

“About?”

Selwyn made a face.

“Look, telling us in confidence has got to be better than having people believe you murdered your mother,” Potter interjected.

“Yes, but this doesn’t exactly…I…I have some debts, you see. Not a lot, but more than my allowance can cover, and I decided to ask her to cover them, just this once, and she said she wouldn’t. We argued, June came to my aid. My mother insulted June, and then we were all shouting at each other. At some point, she collapsed. It must have been the stress that got to her.”

“That isn’t what –” Draco started, but Selwyn interrupted him.

“I know they’re saying poison, but that isn’t possible! We ate the same food my mother did, and even if it had been poisoned, she had an heirloom, a necklace that protects against poisons!”

“Those only work on the more common poisons,” Draco pointed out.

“You’re wrong, Malfoy. The one that belonged to my mother works on everything. It would have eliminated any substance meant to harm her.”

Draco employed his best condescending I-am-not-impressed facial expression, which he had perfected around the age of seven. “Poisons are my area of expertise, Mr Selwyn. I assure you every single thing you just said was incorrect.”

“You –”

Potter cleared his throat. “You know, this pureblood pissing contest is entertaining and all, but we’re trying to solve a murder here.”

“I’ve answered the question,” said Selwyn. “We argued, she died. That is all there is to it.”

“She died right away? Or did she lose consciousness for a while first?” Draco asked.

“I…I’m not sure. June would know better, she’s the one who checked on her, who cast some healing spells.”

“Very well.” Draco waited for Potter’s quill to stop scratching. “Did she mention feeling strange at any point? Did she look uncomfortable, sick?”

Selwyn frowned and actually seemed to think about the question for a while. He stared into the distance and eventually moistened his lips.

“My mother never displayed any weakness if she could help it, never looked sick even when she was, never accepted assistance with anything. There was one moment though when she flinched and gasped, and afterwards, she seemed uncomfortable. She reached for her shawl but didn’t put it on, and she fanned her face at one point. It was out of character for her. I remember thinking maybe she was trying to manipulate us, get us to sympathize with her.”

“When did she flinch?” Potter asked.

“I wasn’t exactly looking at the clock while we argued.”

“No, I mean, do you remember what was being said at the time?”

“Yes, of course, she was insulting June.”

“How? What was it she said?”

“She called June a gold-digger. It’s not true, of course, but…how is this relevant?”

“We can’t share details about the investigation, sorry,” Potter said absent-mindedly as he wrote. Draco couldn’t help but smile. Both of them should have known it wouldn’t be possible to have Potter quietly in the background as they questioned people. His Auror training and instincts were far too prevalent. And they worked well together, or at least Draco thought so.

“Has she ever used that insult before?”

“Well, yes. She has gotten rather paranoid in her old age, she assumes…she _assumed_ that anyone and everyone is after the Selwyn fortune.”

“Women you’ve dated?”

Selwyn sighed. “I…yes. It was a big point of contention between us.”

“Interesting,” said Potter. “I need you to owl a list of anyone you’ve been in a romantic relationship with to Auror Patil as soon as possible. I will let her know to expect it by tomorrow at the latest.”

“Anything else?” Selwyn demanded.

Draco shared a look with Potter before shaking his head. “No, thank you, Mr Selwyn. You’ve been very helpful.”

“It’s _Lord_ Selwyn,” he said peevishly. “But I’m not surprised you forgot, it has been a while since the Malfoy family had this sort of standing, after all. And you’ll never inherit your title, will you? What a shame.”

From the corner of his eye, Draco could see as Potter stood abruptly, apparently offended on Draco’s behalf. It warmed him to see it, even though it wasn’t necessary.

“Funny,” he said. “I’ve never seen a lord whose house elves don’t obey him. If they did, you would have had them meet us at the gate instead of doing it yourself.”

Selwyn paled. Draco, who was beginning to enjoy himself, raised an eyebrow. “Did you really expect I wouldn’t notice?”

“Leave,” he said hoarsely and all but fled back to the manor.

~*~

“Why isn’t he a lord, then?” Potter asked later, when they were making their way through Diagon Alley, searching for a specific flat. “Since his mother died and all. Isn’t that how it goes?”

“Generally, yes, but there are exceptions. I would wager a guess that the Selwyn family attached some condition to the inheritance – that he has to get married first, for example.” Draco once again checked the parchment strip on which Parvati had scrawled an address. “This can’t be right; we should have passed it by now.”

“We’ve been up and down this part of the street three times!”

Draco looked up. “It must be above one of the shops.”

“But there are no numbers or anything, how are we supposed to know? We can’t just knock on every single door.”

“I don’t know.” Admittedly, every time Potter looked at the houses around them, Draco couldn’t help but sneak glances at _Potter,_ so he hadn’t been as much help as he otherwise might have been.

He was acting like a teenager with his first crush, and it was beyond embarrassing.

“Let’s go to the post office,” Potter said, and that was when Draco realized Potter had been looking at him while Draco’s zoned-out gaze had been fixed on Potter’s lips. His face heated immediately.

Merlin, he was such a prat.

“The…what are you planning to do _there?”_

“Send an owl,” Potter said. “To June. We can follow it and figure out where she is. Works sometimes, if the target is nearby.”

“That seems clever, but also complicated and annoying.”

“Well, I find it less annoying than walking down the same street fifteen times.”

“Fair point.”

So they made their way to the post office, where Draco wrote a note saying

_Miss June Sweetleaf,_

_Aurors will be at your place of residence shortly in order to ask you several follow-up_

_questions regarding the death of the Lady Letitia Selwyn. Thank you for your cooperation._

“We aren’t Aurors though,” Potter pointed out.

“Since when are you a stickler for rules?” Draco asked absently while he counted out money for the owl service. “You basically ignored them all through Hogwarts.”

“Well, yes, but I had to reform once I started Auror training, for obvious reasons.”

“And you were never fired, so, _technically…”_

_“Technically_ I didn’t show up for my shift five hundred times in a row.”

“You still weren’t terminated, and that’s what counts. Do you still have your badge, by the way?”

“No. I transfigured it into a spit roast so I could cook squirrels.”

Draco tied the scroll to a large, haughty-looking eagle owl and held out his arm invitingly. “We need you to fly slowly, and as low as possible, please,” he said.

The owl didn’t appear to think much of that nonsense. Once they were outside, she took off immediately.

“I spelled her to leave a short red trace, that should help,” Potter said as they started running after it, which was difficult because they had to look up at the sky and evade the crowds at the same time. After ten or fifteen seconds, they worked out a system – Potter looked up at the owl and shouted out directions while Draco held him by the arm and focused on steering them past anyone and anything in their way.

Eventually, they found the address they had been looking for ten steps into a narrow side street, fairly close to where they had been looking.

“Right,” said Potter after they knocked, touching his face. “My glamour is holding up well enough?”

“Unfortunately,” Draco muttered before he realized what he was saying. “I mean…I don’t know what I mean. Yes, it looks just fine.”

It wasn’t Draco’s fault that Potter looked stupid with hazel eyes, and that his forehead without the lightning bolt scar was just _wrong,_ and that the magic masked the fetching blush that the cold air would normally have brought to his face.

Potter gave him a long look but turned away once the door was flung open.

“Hello,” said a young woman with pink hair and cheekbones that many would have killed for. She was holding the missive they had just sent, still sealed. “Um…how can I help?” She sounded confused.

“June Sweetleaf?” Potter asked.

“Oh, no, no, I’m her roommate. My name’s Eden. I haven’t seen June yet today, she’s probably still in bed. Is it important?” 

“Yes,” Potter confirmed. “We won’t take up much of her time, but we do need to speak with her quite urgently.”

“Oh. Well, come on in then, I’ll get her for you.”

She opened the door wide and beckoned them in. They stepped into a living room that was chaos incarnate, with half-empty or tipped over drink glasses everywhere, decorations that had been mostly torn down, stains and broken glass on the carpet, and so many more things that Draco could barely process it all. He assumed quite a few of them were muggle, as he had never seen them before. The room reeked of sweat and alcohol. 

“We had the hen party last night.” Eden said as she crossed the room ahead of them. Glass crunched beneath her trainers. “Obviously. It got a bit wild, we figured since June’s in for a life of stuffy formal pureblood dinners, we should show her a good time.”

Draco was completely bewildered. When Eden knocked on one of the doors leading away from the room, he turned to Potter. “What in the world is a hen party?”

“As far as I know, it’s sort of…I think it happens before a woman gets married, to celebrate her.”

“And…” Draco’s foot bumped against something. He looked down. “That celebration includes disembodied genitalia?”

“Apparently. It’s not like I’ve ever been to one. I mean, can you imagine Hermione doing something like this?”

“Very much no.”

“So, purebloods don’t do this kind of thing then.”

“Not at all. Ha!” Draco couldn’t help the grin spreading across his face. “I sort of want to send Lyman Selwyn the memory of this. He’d drop dead.”

Eden, meanwhile, was pleading with her roommate. “June, darling, you do need to come out! The Aurors are here, they have more questions.”

There was a loud _thump_ and Eden pulled her head back and closed the door. “She’ll be out in a moment.”

“Look,” said Potter while they waited. “Penis candles.”

“The cake was penis-shaped, too,” said Eden. “I even used magic to fill it with cream, and then –”

“I think we get the picture,” Draco interrupted her, feeling mildly horrified.

Eden grinned at him and vanished through a doorway.

“Erm, here’s a penis necklace.” Potter dangled something bright green from his fingers.

“I can’t believe you’re touching this stuff,” said Draco.

“I cast a _scourgify_ first.”

“Still.”

The door to June’s room opened, and a girl with messy brown hair wrapped in a blanket blinked sleepily. “Aurors?”

“We’re with the Auror department,” Draco sort-of-kind-of confirmed. “Our apologies for waking you. This shouldn’t take long.”

“Alright,” she said and took a few shaky steps into the living room. Draco didn’t think she was entirely sober. She also wasn't wearing shoes and he feared for the soles of her feet.

“Can you –” Potter started.

The door to her room opened wider, and a man stepped out. He was wearing nothing but a red and white Santa hat and a pair of ridiculously tight red briefs that featured the words “HO HO HO” across the front. Despite the green font that seared Draco’s retinas, the words did not manage to distract from the sharp outline of the man’s cock.

“Erm,” said Potter.

“’Scuse me,” the man mumbled and reached for a red shirt that had been draped over the chair. Draco watched, mouth open, as he collected items of clothing from all across the room and dressed himself in what turned out to be an elaborate Santa suit. The trousers had to be velcroed shut. The shiny black boots and fake beard came last, and then the man slunk away with his eyes firmly on the floor.

This had to be one of the most surreal situations Draco had ever found himself in.

“Right,” said Potter, who had apparently had an easier time getting it together. “I need to know all that you can tell us about the last dinner you had with your fiancé and Lady Selwyn.”

~*~

Frustratingly, June didn’t give them any new information but only confirmed what Lyman Selwyn had told them. As though by unspoken agreement, Draco and Potter didn’t drag out the interview, leaving as soon as they could justify. While they’d been talking to her, it had started to snow, which annoyed Draco because in his opinion they’d already had enough of that.

“What just happened?” Potter asked when they were back on Diagon.

“I was going to ask you that.”

“There was –”

“A man in a…in a very strange costume.”

Potter scratched his jaw. “I think he was a stripper.”

“Like…one of those people who get paid to take their clothes off?” Draco asked with horror.

“I’m pretty sure, yes.”

_“Why?”_

“I dunno. I suppose it might just be the sort of thing you do for a hen night.”

Draco considered this. “I mean…if you’re marrying someone like Lyman, I can sort of see the appeal.”

“Yes, he, er…was quite the…specimen.” Potter was looking down at his feet as he said it, and Draco had to steer him out of the way of a family of five.

He seemed reluctant, even embarrassed. Draco decided to take pity on him. “I couldn’t look away either,” he said. “It was rather in-your-face, wasn’t it. Or maybe I only thought so because I need to get laid.”

He wanted to sink into the ground about half a second later. Why, _why_ had he just brought up his lack of a sex life in front of Potter? _Why?_ Was it possible to obliviate someone surreptitiously in the middle of Diagon Alley?

“Me too,” Potter said, snapping Draco out of his burgeoning anxiety attack. “I mean…cairn, obviously. But even before, it was, you know…” He trailed off, then cleared his throat. “This is a really weird conversation.”

“To be fair, it was a really weird situation.”

Potter looked at him and grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling, and then Draco was grinning too, and that made Potter start chuckling. Draco wasn’t far behind. The snowfall was heavy around them as they stood in the middle of Diagon Alley, laughing together, the people around them giving them strange looks as they hurried past.

The warm feeling was back in Draco’s chest, making itself at home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #16 – A shirtless man wearing a Santa hat.


	17. December 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Yes, it's been quite some time. 
> 
> As I mentioned in a recent comment reply for the previous chapter, I have mixed feelings about participating in the fandom these days. My enjoyment has been severely dampened by certain insensitive and damaging comments that I cannot overlook, no matter how much I'd love to separate the art from the artist. I needed a sense of comfort throughout the past year that Harry Potter can unfortunately no longer give me. But it would be blatantly unfair to abandon a work such as Timecode, so I'm working on getting the remaining chapters finished and posted. I'm sorry for the long wait, I really am. I hope you understand.
> 
> Etalice is still a wonderful human being and beta reader.

Draco really should have seen it coming, he could admit that much to himself. The feelings weren’t even _new._ There had long been a sort of undercurrent coloring his every interaction with Potter, a buzzing _something,_ but most of them had happened back at Hogwarts, when he hadn’t been more than a self-absorbed child who thought the world owed him everything. He had never had reason to examine their rivalry any closer. Then there had been a war on, and Potter had been his only hope of escaping the nightmare Draco had found himself in, so it had made sense to think about him so much.

Of course, once he was a bit older, he probably should have been able to tell that there was a reason he was so very hyperaware of Potter’s every breath on the rare occasions they crossed paths, but really, he’d had other problems.

But now…now circumstances were so very different that the _something_ had predictably developed into a full-blown crush.

Unfortunately, the fact that he was aware of it only made things worse. Draco was not used to second-guessing himself constantly, but here he was, agonizing about how much space he should leave between them as he walked down the snowy lane next to Potter. Was it indecent to hope their hands might brush? Would Potter worry that Draco disliked him if he shifted to the left? Would it alarm him if Draco dropped to his knees right here and screamed his frustration into the pale blue sky?

“Should we stop at Honeydukes?” Potter asked.

“Huh?”

“Er, I just remembered Blaise saying that you like some of the chocolates there.”

“Oh.” Draco looked at his feet. “No, I’m fine.”

“Alright.”

They marched on. Draco wondered if he was the only one feeling the awkwardness between them. Potter certainly wasn’t acting like he’d noticed. Then again, Potter had never exactly been known for emotional nuance.

They trudged through the sludgy snow of the High Street for several minutes more before leaving the village behind. Luckily it wasn’t a Hogsmeade weekend for Hogwarts students, else Draco never would have agreed for the two of them to make their way to the castle on foot. He could understand why Potter had expressed the wish to pass through Hogsmeade, however. Any former Hogwarts student who hadn’t Imperiused people and distributed cursed necklaces there was bound to have fond memories of the place.

Draco had to admit, however, that it was all far enough in the past now that the memory and the shame that came with it were no longer all-encompassing. He turned and regarded the elaborate iron sign that hung from the archway they had just passed.

_Welcome to Hogsmeade._

He allowed himself to remember things that felt far away, untainted by the war that had followed. There were the excessive shopping sprees he’d gone on with Pansy, and there was his pretending to check out girls along with Blaise, and that time Vince had pitched himself headfirst into a snowdrift on a dare.

He said as much to Potter – not because it was relevant but because he needed a distraction to keep Potter from wondering why Draco had been so reserved and silent all morning. As he had hoped, it made Potter smile, and a nostalgic expression appeared on his face.

“Good times, weren’t they?” he said. “Especially that time I threw a bunch of mud at you and your friends and terrified the hell out of you when Crabbe pulled my Invisibility Cloak half off of me.”

“Oh?” Draco frowned, and then something clicked. “ _Oh!_ Right. I never connected that to you having the cloak. The entire incident suddenly makes a lot more sense.”

“Good,” Potter said, and grinned. “You know, in the interest of full disclosure.”

He wore a different glamour today, a stronger one that he and Draco and Granger had all added layers to, and as always, Draco was bothered by it. Potter’s mannerisms made it clear enough to anyone who looked closely that it was him behind the unfamiliar features, but even so, there was a sense of disconnect that made Draco wish fervently that Potter could just be his own bloody self.

“Have you thought about how to get past the headmistress?” he asked.

Potter shrugged and looked a bit sheepish. “Keep my head down, basically.”

“That isn’t much of a plan.”

“I know, but what am I supposed to do? If I go under the cloak and she notices you have someone invisible with you, you’ll be in massive trouble. It’s not worth it.

“We did it at the Ministry.”

“That’s different,” Potter said, although he failed to clarify just _how_ it was different. He pulled his lip between his teeth, and Draco decided to take it all back because thank Merlin for glamours – his breath was already stuttering, but if he’d seen that while Potter wore his own face, he might have stopped breathing entirely from the sheer want coursing through him.

“When was the last time you were back?”

Draco was caught off guard yet again, and he briefly wondered why it couldn’t ever be Potter’s turn to act excessively awkward. Of course, he knew the answer already, which was that Potter wasn’t anywhere near as likely to be distracted by his conversational partner’s sheer presence and charisma. Potter also wasn’t the one acting like a third-year Hufflepuff dealing with his first crush.

And here Draco was supposed to be a successful, knowledgeable healer and a worldly and confident man. This was getting ridiculous.

“Draco.”

“Sorry, yes, I was thinking. Do you mean to the village or to Hogwarts itself?”

“The castle,” Potter said and looked towards it, so very near now.

Draco sighed. “Not since the battle,” he said quietly.

Potter turned his way very abruptly. “You can’t be serious. You never went back, not once?”

“I didn’t exactly deserve a warm welcome, after everything.” Draco swallowed hard. It still hurt to think about that, about the fact that he had done terrible things to a place he loved.

“Ah,” Potter said and bit his lip again.

“What?”

“Erm.” Potter looked down. “I’d prefer to tell you later, if that’s alright.”

Well, that didn’t sound ominous at all.

“Sure,” Draco said, since that was the only possible response, and resigned himself to more awkwardness for the rest of the way. 

~*~

McGonagall had always been able to make Draco feel like she saw right through him, and that hadn’t changed at all. She was kind and welcoming, choosing words that seemed superficially polite but conveyed a very clear ‘You’re forgiven, Mr Malfoy, but if you squander that forgiveness I shall be very cross indeed.’ Even more disconcerting was the sort of all-knowing gaze she seemed to have learned from Dumbledore. When she rested that gaze on Harry’s glamoured form, Draco was certain she suspected _something,_ but she didn’t ask a single question about the seemingly shy young man who had come with Draco to take notes and assist with the interview.

“I hope you understand that my presence is required,” she said when Charlotte Fletcher, a dull and exhausted-looking fifth-year Ravenclaw, had arrived at the headmistress’ office and introductions had been made.

“Of course,” said Draco, who felt terrible for the girl. It had only been three weeks since she’d lost her mother, and from what Parvati had told them, it seemed Charlotte barely knew her father at all. “We’ll try to keep this as short as we can, I’m sure talking about it is incredibly difficult.”

“Okay,” said Charlotte, with so little power behind the word that it was barely audible. She was led to a chair by the headmistress who then stood by her side in silent support.

“We’d like to know about anyone in your mother’s life that her coworkers wouldn’t have mentioned to us. Essentially, we want you to list any names you can think of, no matter if they have a motive or not, or whether you think them capable of it. Anyone at all who might have interacted with your mother beyond a polite greeting.”

Charlotte looked at him, but it seemed to Draco like she didn’t see him at all. Her eyes were heartbreakingly lifeless and sad. “That’s a lot of names,” she said.

“I will be helping you. I’m going to mention one facet of your mother’s life at a time, and you say whatever names or descriptions you can think of. Hank over there will write them down.”

After a long moment, she nodded. Her hands were in her lap, fingers hooked together, and she lowered her head to stare at them.

“Great,” said Draco. “Let’s start with anyone who came to your house when you were there for the summer. Did you have visitors or anyone who worked for you?”

“A house elf, Lankey. We shared him with father; he moved between the two houses as we needed him to. We had a gardener too, Mr Gulls, and he sometimes brought his son to help out. No one else worked for us, except…well, there was a tutor, but she only came once. I didn’t like her at all her, so my mother told her not to come back.”

“What was her name, do you remember?”

“Julia. Her last name…something with an ‘F’. ‘Fin-‘ or ‘Fil-‘…something. I don’t know, I’m sorry.”

“That’s quite alright.” Draco tried to sound as kind as he could. “Let’s move on. Do you remember your mother corresponding with anyone via owl or having any Floo conversations?”

It went on like that, with Draco trying his best to coax information out of Charlotte and Harry’s quill scratching almost constantly. She gave them quite a few names at first, but eventually his attempts to get more out of her was met with helpless shrugging. Draco had no desire to upset the headmistress, so once her expression began to morph into impatient disapproval, he thanked Charlotte for her time and sent her on her way.

“Are you thinking of starting a new career then, Mr Malfoy?” McGonagall asked, just before dismissing them. “Auror work suits you surprisingly well.”

“Oh, no. I’m perfectly happy in my St Mungo’s lab, I really am only consulting with them for this one case.”

“And yet they trust you to conduct interviews without Auror guidance or supervision,” she said, and then her eyes slid to Harry standing unobtrusively off to the side and she smiled in that knowing way again.

Draco decided it was high time they said their goodbyes.

~*~

“She knows something,” he said when they were making their way back through Hogsmeade to the little-used apparition point on the far side of the village.

“I got that impression as well,” Potter confirmed. “It felt as though she could see straight through my glamour. She said, ‘It’s good to see you’ and looked me in the eyes and it took me a moment to realize that she should be speaking to someone she’s never met in her life. It didn’t feel that way.”

“If she does know somehow, do you think she’ll tell anyone?”

“No,” said Potter, “if she’d decided to, she would have confronted us first. She’s not – forgive me for saying this, it’s not a value judgment, but she’s not generally very Slytherin. If she recognized us but didn’t say something like ‘Gentlemen, what is this nonsense’, then I think she just planned to see what happens next. Or it could be she has no clue and just wanted to disconcert us for the fun of it.”

“Wouldn’t put it past her. Dumbledore had an odd sense of humor, but maybe she inherited it along with the post.”

Potter barked a laugh. Then he gestured toward Honeydukes as they were passing it. “Did you want to stop by now?”

 _“Seriously,_ Potter?” Draco asked. “Do you think I’m addicted to chocolates or something?”

Potter’s face fell. Once again, Draco counted himself lucky that Potter wasn’t wearing his own face at the moment, because seeing that kicked-puppy expression combined with earnest green eyes and a knitted forehead with a lightning bolt scar would have murdered him with guilt.

“What is your obsession with me eating chocolate?” Draco asked. Then he stopped dead. “Wait…did _you_ want to buy chocolate?”

“No,” Potter said, sounding grumpy and hurt, “no, I don’t.”

Draco felt a bit lost and like he’d missed something, but that didn’t stop the guilt from trying to drown him anyway. He tried to find something to say, a peace offering, a placating gesture, but in the end, he remained silent and confused and felt like a knob.

“Side-along?” he asked when they had reached the apparition point, and offered his elbow.

“Sure,” said Potter, but he didn’t look at Draco at all. The snow-covered ground was evidently far more interesting.

~*~

While Potter was talking to Susan once again – through the Floo this time – Draco used the opportunity to review the new notes that Victoria had owled him. It was slow going because he was distracted and confused and fighting the urge to bang his head against the wall – for one because they were barely making any progress, and also because Draco was an idiot with inconvenient feelings.

He wondered if any of the other Dracos in previous iterations of the time loop had just, well, _tried_ – maybe kissed Potter, or even just told him how they felt. Draco half-wished he had his own set of notes that carried over from one iteration to the next to guide him along. ‘Punch Smith on Day 19’. ‘Antidote formula is:’. ‘Don’t try kissing Potter.’

Or maybe ‘Do try kissing Potter.’

Draco sighed deeply and put down Victoria’s notes. There was no point, he couldn’t concentrate on them. It really would have been nice to know if there was the tiniest chance Potter might…not be entirely averse to the idea of getting a tad closer to Draco than strictly necessary. Draco cursed his previous iterations for not convincing Potter to put the tiniest hint about it on his arm. It would have made things so much easier. Then again, his previous iterations had probably all been just as terrified to try it as Draco was now, and if they hadn’t kissed Potter, they could hardly have left hints about it.

Draco sat up straight when something occurred to him. Could he do it differently this time around? Was that possible? Could he try to kiss Potter and, depending on how it went, persuade him to add to Draco’s coded message, so at least he wouldn’t try it again if Potter hadn’t reacted well? The thought was utterly terrifying. He didn’t want to put himself out there, not one bit, but at least time would reset eventually, and he wouldn’t have to live with the humiliating memory until the end of his days.

There was a very good reason Draco hadn’t been sorted Gryffindor, but maybe, just this once, he could act like one.

Right. Great. That was decided, then.

Now he just needed a good opportunity.

~*~

To Draco’s surprise, Weasley was actually home when they flooed over to the Granger-Weasley residence for dinner that evening. Things still didn’t seem quite right between him and Granger, but his presence had to be a good sign, at least.

“Parvati handed me a list of names she received,” Granger told them over salmon and green beans. “Suspects, I think.”

“From Lyman Selwyn?” Potter asked.

“That sounds right.”

“Brilliant. We got one from Charlotte Fletcher, so we can compare the two later.” Potter was silent for a beat and then, because he had no subtlety whatsoever, added, “Are things alright between the two of you, then?”

Weasley pressed his lips together and crossed his arms. “I don’t know,” he said frostily. “How many more secrets are there that I haven’t been told?”

Granger looked down at her plate. “That…that was all there was. Truly.”

Weasley’s face remained sceptical.

“And I promise I’ll be better in the future,” Granger added, and finally, Weasley’s shoulders dropped and he sighed.

“Mom is ecstatic. I had to talk her down from telling the next thirty people she saw. I mean, I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but Bill said that you never know at this stage if…you know, if everything will go well. And it made me realize how excited I am, even if I didn’t find out under ideal circumstances.”

“Oh, shit,” Potter said, barely audible.

“What?” Granger asked.

“Er, nothing. It’s not important.”

Weasley sighed again. “Harry, at this point I am very much sick of people keeping secrets, so spit it out.”

“Well,” said Potter, looking incredibly awkward and reluctant, “it only just occurred to me that there must have been a good reason the message on my arm was phrased the way it was.”

“It said not to put me in danger,” said Granger, “so I suppose in one iteration I must have been, and…oh.” She paled.

Weasley’s eyes widened. “You mean you…you lost the baby?”

“Yes,” she said, “I think I probably did.”

Weasley reached across the table to take her hand. “It’s going to be fine though. Right? If we’re careful, it has to be fine.”

It was a sobering thought, that some of the messages must have been written to fix some tragedy that had happened during the previous iteration. Draco put his fork down. The salmon suddenly felt like a lump of lead in his stomach.

“In other news,” Granger said with false cheer, “did you hear we’ll have a storm tomorrow? The Floo network might be down for a while if it gets as bad as they’re fearing.”

They finished dinner and moved what remained of their drinks over to the coffee table, above which the fairy lights were still twinkling. Draco awkwardly sat next to Potter while the other two fetched snacks, trying and failing to find a clever topic of conversation.

“So,” he said eventually, “do we have to change tomorrow’s plans because of the storm?”

“Dunno,” Potter responded.

“Ah,” said Draco.

There was a shriek. The two of them jumped to their feet, but then they heard laughter, and when Granger and Weasley came back into the room, they were smiling broadly.

“What did we miss?” Potter asked immediately.

“We’re having a girl,” Weasley announced, beating Granger to the punch. “We’re having a _girl!”_

“Congratulations,” Draco said at the same time Potter did.

“Ron was coming up with some ghastly name ideas,” Granger said, laughing, “and I cast the spell mostly so I’d only have to argue against half of them.”

“Clarence is a perfectly respectable name!” Weasley protested.

“Well, we don’t have to worry about that one. What about Agnes?”

Weasley made a face. “No. Hey, we could name her after Harry! I mean, er, make it Harriet, obviously.”

“Over my dead body,” said Potter. “That poor child.”

“What about Oriana?” Granger proposed.

“That’s too…hm.” Weasley frowned. “It’s just sort of…a bit too fancy, you know? Wouldn’t you feel strange changing the nappies of a baby named Oriana?”

“I swear, Weasley, you come up with the most absurd reasoning.” Draco shook his head.

“Oh, stuff it, Malfoy, unless you’ve got a better idea.”

“Phaedra,” said Draco.

“No,” the two of them chorused.

“What about Rose?” Weasley proposed.

Suddenly, Granger was beaming. “Rose!”

“Rose?”

“Rose.”

“Rose,” Weasley said again, sounding awed, and embraced Granger.

“Because it’s not like we know anyone named after a flower or anything,” Potter pointed out drily. Draco smirked at that, and Potter, catching it, smirked back while the parents-to-be murmured endearments at Granger’s belly.

“Let’s call it a time-honed tradition,” said Draco. “She can join the elite family of plant-children.”

Potter snorted, and then said, “Oh!”

“What?”

“Speaking of plants, I keep forgetting about this.” He dug in his pocket and produced the small silver cube with the button. “Oi, Hermione, do you know what this is? Or Ron, for that matter?”

They finally turned away from their belly-doting to look. It only took a moment until Granger gasped. “Where did you get that, Harry? These are supposed to be under lock and key!”

“Er, I don’t even know what this is, frankly,” Potter told her. “Or where it’s supposed to be from.”

“We use them at the Department of Mysteries. Blaise and Anton came up with them. They create a see-through barrier that is close to impenetrable for a little while. Very useful as a safety precaution when anyone’s doing an experiment.”

“Oh, _shit,”_ Draco said with feeling.

“Why?”

“Because we found one where Orval Amado was killed. So, either our culprit is ridiculously good at sneaking into the Department of Mysteries and getting back out, or…”

“Or,” Potter finished, “he or she works there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #17 – A “Welcome to Hogsmeade” sign


	18. December 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for being so kind and understanding about why this story was on hiatus for so long. It's a big relief not to have upset people as much as I feared.
> 
> Etalice is better than a Pringles chip in a wind tunnel.

As soon as Draco stepped out of the shower the next morning, he heard Potter singing in the kitchen. It sounded surprisingly cheerful, considering how depressingly the previous night had ended, and he had high hopes that Potter was making breakfast again. When he entered the kitchen, however, he stood there and blinked in confusion.

“What are you doing, exactly?”

Potter turned to him and displayed his dough-covered hands and flour-speckled apron to full effect. “What does it look like?”

“A mess.”

“Oh.” Potter looked down to inspect himself. “Well, yes, but that’s just a by-product.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, look outside.”

Draco did. He could barely see anything through the frost-covered window, except a lot of moving white. “That’s the storm, I suppose?”

“The start of it,” said Potter.

“I don’t understand where you’re going with this.”

“No? Fine, I’ll put it another way. It’s almost Christmas. The weather is absolute shit. The Floo Network is down. This is what you’re supposed to do when that happens.” He indicated his apron.

“Make a mess,” said Draco.

“Make biscuits, you numpty.”

“You know how to make biscuits?”

“No, I thought I’d throw a few random ingredients in a bowl and see what happens. Yes, Malfoy, of course I know how to make biscuits.”

“Oh,” Draco said and tried to process this sudden domesticity. Making breakfast was one thing, even Draco had some very basic skills in that direction, but Christmas biscuits…he’d never tried making those. It sounded…cosy. He remembered how, years ago, when he’d been a child, he would sneak into the kitchen during December and sit there as the elves were busy baking, nibbling contentedly on something he’d begged off of them.

“Can I watch?” he asked, and immediately felt rather silly.

Potter, who had turned his attention back to the ball of dough on the counter, scoffed at that. “Of course not. You’re helping me.”

“What!”

“Well, I’m sure as hell not doing all the work. Do you have any clingfilm?”

“Maybe, I’m not entirely certain,” said Draco, and went to rifle through his kitchen cupboards and drawers. “Where’d you even get the ingredients?”

“Ron had everything I needed; he’s making biscuits too. He sent it over just in time before the Floo closed.”

“I should probably buy groceries one of these days,” said Draco.

“Probably,” Potter agreed cheerfully.

The morning was almost shockingly enjoyable. Draco smiled at Potter’s atrocious singing while they mixed and kneaded and chilled the different doughs, then rolled them out after Potter transfigured a butter knife into a rolling pin. Because Weasley had been loath to part with any but two of his cutters, most of the biscuits were shaped either like trees or like angels, although a few times Potter got creative and cut his own shapes, which were almost never identifiable.

The kitchen began to smell of cinnamon and ginger once the first batch was in the oven, and the tension of the last couple of weeks bled out of Draco bit by bit. Once there was nothing left to do but watch as the last batch baked, he leaned against the counter and did so, but he also couldn’t help watch Potter – the dark-haired menace – flit around the kitchen and shed flour everywhere as he attempted to clean up at least some of the mess.

“You do have a wand, you know,” Draco pointed out.

“That feels like cheating,” was the utterly absurd answer. Potter’s hair, face and glasses were flour-smeared just like the rest of him, and as Draco watched, he reached up to wipe one of his lenses clean and then made a sound of frustration because his hands and clothes were too dirty to do so.

“Come here,” Draco said with yet another smile, and once Potter stepped in front of him, he raised his wand and cast a gentle cleaning spell on the glasses – though not on anything else, because a flour-speckled Potter was oddly endearing. Draco particularly enjoyed the long streak along the side of his jaw, although he wasn’t about to say that out loud.

Potter cleared his throat. “Thanks, Draco.” 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Draco said. “Now you too?”

Potter grinned. “Draco.”

“Stop it, Potter!” Draco protested, because the sound of it made him shudder in a way that was far too pleasant and therefore needed to cease immediately.

“Draco,” Potter said again.

“No.”

“Draco.”

“Seriously, stop!”

“Why is this such a problem for you?” Potter asked and stepped closer. He studied Draco’s face intently.

“It’s just…” Draco tried to find words that wouldn’t come. “It’s very…strange.”

Potter took another step closer. “Strange doesn’t mean bad.”

“I didn’t say it does.”

“Then what exactly is the problem, Draco? ‘Strange’ is not a good enough answer, that only means you need time to get used to it.”

Draco groaned and closed his eyes to escape Potter’s intent gaze. This was bad. Much more of this, and he would blurt out exactly how he felt, and while, yes, he’d planned to, this certainly wasn’t the way he wanted to do it. He would need a perfect moment if he wanted there to be any chance of –

“Look at me,” said Potter, and he sounded a lot…closer?

Draco’s eyes flew open. “What –” he started, and then Potter’s face was inches from his.

“Say my name.”

“Potter, I –”

“No, not that one.”

“I don’t –”

“My  _ name, _ Draco.”

He felt trapped by green eyes and crackling tension and his own fear. His mind registered the hard edge of the counter at his back and the sound of the wind outside and the smell of freshly baked biscuits, and then there was the man in front of him who eclipsed all of it simply by breathing.

“Harry,” he whispered, and Potter surged forward and kissed him.

Draco spent a long moment being utterly stunned before his hands shot up and fisted Potter’s shirt, and he kissed back with a low groan that was relief and want and hunger all in one. He felt a hand at the small of his back, the reassuring pressure and warmth of it making him absurdly want to cry, because he’d  _ hoped _ but he hadn’t actually thought –

The kiss became deep and messy; stubble scraped Draco’s lips, but he didn’t care because it was so, so good. Potter tasted fucking  _ amazing, _ the prick, and he seemed just as content as Draco to keep going and going, touching and tasting and sighing with pleasure. Draco wouldn’t have guessed it was possible to enjoy the feeling of dough-streaked fingers threading into his hair, but all he could think about when it happened was the strange perfection of it.

There was a shrill ringing noise. They drew apart, lips hovering less than an inch from each other while Draco groped blindly for his wand and dismissed the timer he had set.

“Hold that thought,” Potter whispered, pecked Draco on the lips, and went to pull the biscuits out of the oven.

Draco stood and watched while his skin tingled and his head spun, and he sucked in air like he’d just run several miles. He couldn’t even attempt to wrap his head around what had just happened.

Merlin Fuck.

He brushed his index and middle finger across his lips, which were sore and sensitive, the skin around them scratched halfway to hell because bloody Potter didn’t know how to shave. Draco wouldn’t have had it any other way. He watched as Potter – fuck, he really did want to call him Harry, the intimacy of it was tempting – tried to brush off his apron and only succeeded at sending a cloud of white dust flying up into the air.

“Oh, hold still, I’ll get it,” Draco said, reaching for his wand.

“Thanks,” said Potter and stood patiently still as Draco methodically cast cleaning spells at his face and hair, his apron, the rest of his clothes. Once he was finished, Potter untied his apron and laid it across the back of a chair.

“Are we done, then?” Draco asked with a nod at the biscuits.

“We need to let everything finish cooling before we can decorate,” Potter explained, and then he shot Draco a sly look.

“What?” Draco asked, and he blamed the dizzying effect Potter had on him for not understanding right away because he liked to think he was generally not this dense. That was more Potter’s department.

“Well,” Potter said and brushed against him on his way out of the kitchen, “that means we’ve got quite a bit of free time, you know.”

Draco hurried after him. 

They came together again in the living room, an enthusiastic meeting of tongues and teeth and emotions, gasps of breath and wandering hands. Even though the fireplace was barely radiating any heat, Draco felt too warm. His hands shook as he reached out and fisted and wrenched fabric almost brutally, receiving approving moans for his efforts. Eventually, Potter let himself fall backwards to sit on the couch, pulling Draco along.

Draco landed in an undignified sprawl, half on Potter’s lap, half off, and made an even more undignified  _ oof _ sound as it happened. He was pulled up a moment later, and they adjusted until Draco was straddling Potter’s thighs and oh,  _ fuck. _

“Merlin, Potter,” he breathed.

“Harry.”

“Harry,” Draco said obediently and squeezed his eyes shut while strong hands slipped beneath his messily untucked shirt and skimmed up his sides with agonizing slowness. “Fuck,  _ Harry.” _

“Yes, Draco?”

“More.”

He felt lips kissing his jaw and his throat, wandering all the way to his ear. Teeth tugged on his earlobe. “Say my name again.”

“Harry.” Draco rolled his hips and threw his head back at the resulting pulse of heat tingling up his spine. “Harry!”

“Draco,” came the breathless answer.

Harry pushed his hips up, Draco rolled his again, and they established an intoxicating rhythm, hard and hot against each other. Harry’s hand gripped Draco’s hair tightly and scattered sparks straight into his veins. In retaliation, or maybe in thanks, Draco dug his nails into the skin at the nape of Harry’s neck.

“If we keep this up,” Draco gasped, barely getting the words out, “I’m going to embarrass myself like a teenager.”

“Sounds good,” said Harry and redoubled his efforts, and – oh Merlin, it did sound good, beyond good, fucking excellent. There was a throbbing, pulling sensation from Draco’s lower belly straight to his cock that told him it was not going to take much more despite the fact that they’d only just started. Harry mouthed the skin of his throat and made him shudder. Draco sucked in a sharp breath; his eyes squeezed shut so violently now that he was beginning to see stars.

“Close,” Harry gasped, “I’m so fucking close it’s almost stupid, how the hell do you do this to me–”

Draco made a sound that was half groan and half breathless sob, his orgasm hitting him so fiercely that it threatened to consume him wholly. He lost track of everything else as he threw his head back even further, belly clenching rhythmically, throat closing up, fingers clinging on for dear life, so hot, fuck,  _ fuck– _

His own breath rattled in his ears when he came back down and half-collapsed on Harry, who was shaking, himself. Draco felt a bead of sweat run down the side of his face as he fought to catch his breath.

After a very long moment, Harry breathed, “Oh my god,” almost reverently.

Draco ran his fingers through sweat-soaked dark hair. “Are you alright?” he asked.

A breathless chuckle answered the question. “Rarely been better,” Harry added as if to clarify.

“Good,” Draco rasped.

“Very good,” Harry agreed.

Draco pulled back a little and smiled, and Harry smiled back, and it felt utterly amazing.

~*~

“I spent half the night thinking about it, about who the poisoner is,” Harry said later, “and I figured I needed to distract myself, so…biscuits it was.”

“Indeed,” Draco said and glanced down at the angel-shaped gingerbread he was currently disfiguring. Harry had made something called royal icing in three different colours and encouraged Draco to give decorating a go. Judging by the look he was giving Draco now, he was presumably regretting that.

“That’s, er, a very…happy angel…thing”

“Yes, well,” said Draco, “you’ve never seen one, have you, so you don’t know what they look like. This could be perfectly accurate.”

“True.” Harry sighed deeply, accompanying a mournful shake of his head. “Poor angels.”

“Shut it, Potter.”

“You agreed to call me Harry, you can’t take it back now!”

“Don’t be daft, I can’t insult you and not call you  _ Potter  _ while I do it. Your first name doesn’t lend itself to my disdainful tone nearly as well.”

Harry’s amused smirk was so full of fondness that Draco suddenly felt much too warm. He cleared his throat and attempted to give his angel feathered wings, but he knew before he even started that the endeavour was doomed to fail. His artistic talent started and ended with stick figures.

“Anyway,” said Harry. “Who do you think makes the most sense?”

He didn’t have to clarify. Draco had been mulling it over as well.

“Not Blaise, not Granger, obviously. I can’t picture Marielle being that cold-blooded. Smith certainly has the temperament, but he is in no way smart enough to create a poison like this. That leaves…Clearwater, I suppose.” He grimaced because that seemed implausible.

“You’re absolutely sure it couldn’t be Blaise?” Harry asked him. “I don’t mean to doubt you, I just –”

“I know,” Draco sighed. “He did create the barrier cubes. But I’ve known Blaise for so long, and while I know he can be vindictive at times, it’s rare. And he isn’t a murderer. I can’t picture him killing anyone, especially not three people that he can’t have been very close to.”

“Er,” Harry said and looked suddenly uncomfortable, “wasn’t it…didn’t his mother…?”

“Seven husbands, seven very suspicious deaths, yes, but that’s one of the reasons I don’t think Blaise did it. He and his mother grew apart over the years, he trusted her less and less the more stepfathers he lost. He hated that it kept happening. I don’t think he ever knew for sure it was her, but I also don’t think she tried very hard to prove to him that it wasn’t.”

Harry nodded in acknowledgment. He laid aside the frosting bag and reached for his wand instead, feathering the two colours of icing he had just applied with precise movement. Draco watched it with envy.

“The thing is, I can’t wrap my head around who could have created this poison,” he said after a long moment of silence. “I don’t want to sound arrogant - that’s not me anymore, don’t even start - but I really am very good at what I do, and I couldn’t even come close to inventing something like this. Nobody in the department had the right sort of history or experience to have made it, they would have to be collaborating with someone else.”

“Maybe they did.”

Draco nodded. “They must have. I still don’t think it’s Marielle, but then again, I barely know her. Maybe she knows some prodigious Potion Master in France.”

“So it could still be Smith, too,” said Harry, “or Clearwater. I want to say I can’t picture her wanting to kill anyone, but I learned on the third bloody day of Auror training that you can’t let your instincts lead an investigation. Pay attention to them, yes, but I can’t use them to rule her out.”

“I could also be Anton, the bloke who works with Blaise in the Thought Room.”

“Hm,” said Harry and paused, wand hovering in mid-air. “He’s supposed to be in Lithuania, isn’t he? We should look into it. Is there anyone else associated with Mysteries that we haven’t thought of?”

“There is the supervisor, the older lady. I forgot her name, to be honest.”

“Older lady?” Harry asked blankly.

“Yes, the department is overseen by a woman who supposedly hasn’t got a clue about anything that goes on in it.”

“Could be an act, or maybe someone’s using her,” Harry considered.

“And now that I think about it, I remember Blaise mentioning a while back that there were several Unspeakables who quit or were transferred a couple of years back, some minor scandal to do with misconduct or misuse of funds, I don’t quite remember. It was probably before the barrier cubes though.”

“Probably not any of them, then, but we should bring it up just in case.” Harry twirled his wand and started icing a fresh biscuit. “Do you need…help?”

Draco lowered his gaze to his project. The icing had smeared, red on white, making the angel look rather like a bloodthirsty cannibal Veela. He pushed it away in horror and reached for a fresh one. Green and white seemed like a much better combination, now that he thought about it.

“Here,” Harry said and pushed a tree-shaped biscuit his way. “Ice it all green, dry it, and then just put some nice dots on it for ornaments.

“Right.”

His tone had to have given something away because Harry reached out to brush his fingers across Draco’s wrist. “The only reason I’m good at this is because I used to make these every December for my friends and for the rest of the Aurors, for years. You just need a bit of practice, really.”

“If you’re trying to be nice, please stop. You’re terrible at it.”

“Don’t I know it.” Harry shot him a look Draco couldn’t quite interpret. “I tried to be nice yesterday, and that was clearly an awful idea.”

“What? Why?”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Well I  _ tried _ to buy you chocolates because I know you like them, but you were really offended by it.”

“Oh,” Draco said and ducked his head. He could feel his face heating as he thought back to how violently he’d reacted to the attempted kind gesture.

“Yes,  _ oh.” _

“That reminds me though, you said there was something you would tell me later, in Hogsmeade yesterday, and you haven’t. What was it?”

“Right.” Harry looked down at his current biscuit with an unreadable expression before pushing it away.

Draco waited for quite some time. Apparently, whatever Harry meant to say was more serious than he’d thought.

Eventually, Harry took a deep breath. “I had a lot of time to think when I was in the cairn, you know.”

“Alright.”

“And I had quite a few heart-to-hearts with my mom about a lot of things, including the war, of course, and about the things I regretted, and at one point we got to talking about you.”

Draco wasn’t sure he liked where this was going, but he only nodded.

“She gave me a lot of perspective, made me think about a lot of things I’d never thought about before. Frankly, I never even considered how isolated you must have grown up. You did, didn’t you? When was the first time you met someone who was muggleborn?”

“I think you know the answer,” said Draco. “I was eleven.”

“Hogwarts,” Harry said with a nod. “My mom asked me how I thought I might have turned out if I’d been spoiled and doted on and surrounded only by people who taught me how much better purebloods are supposed to be than anyone else, without any sort of chance to form my own opinion.”

Draco winced, but it wasn’t like Harry hadn’t got it exactly right. “Yes, well,” he said. “I got there eventually.”

“I know, but it wasn’t until I thought about it that I realized it literally wasn’t possible for you to be any other way when we first met, not with that background, not at that age. And then I was rude to you – justified, obviously, but you couldn’t have known that with what you’d been taught. Naturally, you loved your father and thought he was brilliant, and he’d taught you that the Weasleys were blood traitors. You warned me about it, and from your point of view I was quite unthankful.”

“I also had no experience dealing with rejection,” Draco said quietly. “Everyone always acted like it was the greatest honour to be friends with me, before.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Harry. He pushed his half-iced biscuit to the side and tilted his head consideringly but remained silent.

“It seemed perfectly justified to hate you when you did that. Actually, I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter. I thought my father might disown me if I ignored that severe a slight.”

Harry nodded grimly.

“It isn’t an excuse for what I did in the war, not when I had that much time to learn before it happened,” Draco continued.

“You were sorted into Slytherin though, so you were still mostly surrounded by people who shared your parents’ opinions and treated you like you were used to.”

Draco shook his head. “Don’t do that. Don’t make excuses for me being the kind of person I was. Maybe my upbringing explains things, but it doesn’t excuse them.”

Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms and looked at Draco intently.

“What?” Draco asked.

“I’m not trying to make excuses. It just…sucks to think about how unfair it all was. I know that makes me sound like I’m about eight, but still.”

Draco was silent for a while as he contemplated the matter. Then he reached out and fished for Harry’s hand, tugging it closer. “Look. I’m not saying we shouldn’t talk about the war, because it happened, and it’s a huge part of both our pasts. But you shouldn’t dwell on it, not when we can’t change anything.”

“That’s easier said than done,” Harry grumbled as he propped his crossed arms on the table. A moment later he pulled them back and cursed. Draco smirked when he saw the elbow full of green icing and flicked his wand for a cleaning spell. He did not, however, have a biscuit icing repair spell handy, so he could only watch as Harry stared mournfully at his ruined creation.

“You know,” Draco started, then hesitated, trying to find the right words. The last thing he wanted to do right now was be insensitive. “I don’t want to say that it’s a good thing the war happened, because obviously war is never a good thing. I  _ am _ thankful that there was an opportunity for me to shed so many of my old beliefs though, that I was confronted with so many hard truths, because if I hadn’t been, I’d most likely still be a spoilt arsehole looking down his nose at everyone.”

“I get what you mean,” Harry said. “I do. And for the record, I, too, am glad that you’re no longer a spoilt arsehole.”

Draco gave in to the juvenile instinct to stick his tongue out. Apparently, Harry took that to be an invitation, and a moment later he’d jumped up from his chair, rounded the table and kissed Draco hard enough to make him wince.

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t be,” Draco whispered back, reaching for him, trying to pull him down to his level, and it was so awkward and perfect that Draco’s heart soared. Harry kissed him again and again, and he had to have snuck a spoonful of icing when Draco hadn’t been paying attention, because he tasted sugary-warm – a bit addicting, although if Draco was honest with himself, that was probably Harry Potter in general.

He didn’t attribute any significance to the rushing sound that reached his ears, but he regretted it when, a few moments later, there was the sound of a throat clearing. They separated with twin gasps.

“Fuck, Ron,” Harry said before Draco had even managed to turn around. Apparently the Floo Network was back up and running, then. “Bit of privacy, yeah?”

“Mate, it isn’t like I’m dying to see this sort of thing.” Weasley was squinting at them as though he was looking into a very bright light.

“Ask before coming through then,” Draco said lightly. He was pleased that Harry didn’t seem willing to let go of him entirely.

“Normally I would, trust me.” Weasley grimaced. “Parvati just flooed us, though. There’s been another victim.”

So much for their quiet, cozy day, Draco thought with regret as he holstered his wand and followed the other two back through the fireplace. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #18 – Iced biscuits in the shape of Christmas trees


End file.
